1126th
Feb

The new blue acrylic pieces are now for sale in the shop! Featuring the Star Trek medical and science insignias, and an awesome TARDIS (which I really want to keep for myself, but alas there are only two at the moment). I have also restocked the Triforce necklaces.

I’ve created a Twitter and updated the Facebook page if anyone would like to follow them.

This week I started my new job so most evenings I’ve been too tired to do anything productive. I’ve started watching Supernatural after many many people recommended it to me, and my god is it ever addictive. I’ve gotten through half of Season 1 already with Season 2 ready to watch afterwards. It’s a nice combination of “monster of the week” episodes with an overall arc for each season, and it’s very funny and interesting. Pretty much like Buffy but with two brothers hunting demons instead of slaying vampires. There are currently 6 seasons so it will keep me occupied for a couple of months at least.

This week my gig outing was quite special as we went to the NME Awards Ceremony at Brixton Academy on Wednesday. We went last year and had a great time in the pit so we decided to go and queue early in the hopes of getting pit passes again. It was worth spending a few hours in the cold as we managed to get our hands on the precious yellow passes. We watched the celebrities arriving while we were waiting upstairs, and after an amusing incident with Nikki from Big Brother we got led downstairs and into the standing pit at the front. There was free beer available so we snagged some and found a place in the middle. The standing pit at the awards show is always tiny; we were stood at the back of it and there were only about 4-5 rows of people in front of us. They also take away the barrier so you are literally right up against the stage. It’s a great place to see some really big acts perform.

Angelos Epithemieu was the host and mumbled his way through the awards, most of his dry in-character observations going over everyone’s heads. There weren’t a lot of surprise wins and the most amusing thing was watching the bands get more and more drunk as they stumbled up to collect their awards. The bands performing included My Chemical Romance, Hurts, PJ Harvey and Crystal Castles who were a nice surprise, and the atmosphere in the pit varied depending on whose fans you were stood nearest to. The big moment was Dave Grohl receiving the Godlike Genius award, and after a rambling acceptance speech The Foo Fighters took to the stage for their set. Usually the winners play a set of about 4-5 songs, but Dave announced that they would be playing a 2 hour set. Most of us just laughed it off, but as the songs kept going and going, we realised he was true to his word! They played their new album in its entirety and then followed it up with a selection of their hits. We actually had to leave before the end in order to make our last tube home.

It was a pretty epic night anyway, and being a few metres away from Dave Grohl was definitely an experience.

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1122nd
Feb

So much for a months leave; I had an interview last week for a position in London and started yesterday. I’ll have to get used to waking up at a normal time again.

The new acrylic has been received and it looks fantastic! There are a few pieces that can’t go up yet as I’m still waiting on other colours, but the blue ones and restocked yellow should be in the shop by the weekend.

This weekend I was kept busy with two gigs, the NME Awards tour at Brixton Academy on Saturday and Carl Barat at the 100 Club on Sunday.

The NME Awards tour is usually an opportunity for the NME to show off their latest indie favourites, so it was quite a surprise to see Magentic Man and Crystal Castles heading the lineup. Not your usual generic NME fare. I am not a fan at all of the other two bands, The Vaccines and Everything Everything, so I showed up late in the hope of missing them. No such luck with Everything Everything as I had to put up with most of their squawking, vacuous set. I moved forward before Magnetic Man to get a decent spot and instantly found myself surrounded by chav-esque youngsters. This did not bode well. My predictions were correct as Magnetic Man turned out to be an awful dubstep DJ ensemble. I just don’t get everyone’s fascination with dubstep; maybe I’m just getting old. They seemed to be quite well known as they got a massive response from the crowd and then about half the venue buggered off once they had ended. Their loss for missing out on an epic Crystal Castles set.

A roadie came out just before the band hit the stage to let us know that Alice Glass had a broken ankle, and although the doctor told her to cancel the tour, she said fuck that. This was met with a loud cheer as the band followed, their singer limping on with her foot in plaster and a crutch in one hand. It was a frenetic, riotous set that was not in any way hampered by Alice’s injury, as she threw herself around the stage as usual and even clambered into the crowd towards the end. I was worried that Crystal Castle’s sound would seem out of place in the large venue (as had happened when they supported The Cure at the O2 Arena) but the bass was apparently turned up to 11 and each beat vibrated through the crowd as if we were in an intimate club. It was a fun, if fairly short, setlist and they ended the main section on their massive hit ‘Not In Love’, with a two-song encore following to appease the ravenous audience.

Fainting Spells
Baptism
Courtship Dating
Doe Deer
Crimewave
Suffocation
Alice Practice
Black Panther
Celestica
Empathy
Reckless
Not In Love
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Intimate
Yes No

The Carl Barat gig was another NME awards show (as seems to be the case with most of my February gigs) and it was originally scheduled to be at the Shepherds Bush Empire. For various reasons the whole of Carl’s UK tour was either cancelled or rescheduled, with this gig being moved to the 100 Club on the same day. Our best guess was that the gig didn’t sell enough tickets, so they moved to a smaller venue, although we were pleased with this turn of events as the 100 Club is a lot more intimate. The support acts were rehashed from the previous tour so we were familiar with quite a few of their songs already. By the time Carl and his band came onstage, the tiny room was packed to the back and we were crushed against the stage barely inches from the famous frontman.

The setlist was pretty much the same as the last time I saw him but it was bolstered by the fact that we were a lot more familiar with his solo album by now. There were Dirty Pretty Things and Libertines tracks scattered throughout, which of course got the biggest reactions, and we also got treated to an impromptu rendition of ‘What A Waster’ as requested by an audience member. As he ended on ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ the room went insane and bounced around so much that even my mum was encouraged to join in.

Je Regrette, Je Regrette
Run With The Boys
The Man Who Would Be King
Carve My Name
She’s Something
Deadwood
The Magus
So Long, My Lover
What Have I Done
Up The Bracket
Death Fires Burn At Night
What A Waster
Death On The Stairs
Bang Bang You’re Dead
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9 Lives
The Ballad Of Grimaldi
France
The Fall
Don’t Look Back Into The Sun

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115th
Feb

Heartbreaker

Posted in gigs | life - (0 Comments)

After years and years of wanting to go, I have found myself with a 4 day pass for the 2011 San Diego Comic Con! Unfortunately I don’t know if I can go yet, as a quick scan for flight prices came back with £700 for a return from London. Plus I imagine hotels will be pricey and I will need some spending money. I’ll have to budget over the next few months and see if maybe the prices go down a bit. It will be quite easy to sell the ticket if I can’t go. But it’s a possibility which is still exciting! Maybe when the panels and booths start getting confirmed I can decide if it’s worth it or not.

There was a gig this week, and it was Metronomy at Heaven for the NME Awards. I first discovered Metronomy when they supported CSS at Bristol Academy in 2007. They were a kooky band with interesting electronic music and poundland nightlights stuck to their chests, and I was instantly intrigued. It wasn’t until late 2008 when their second album was released (‘Nights Out’, much easier to find than their limited first release) that I started to listen to them properly, and since then I have made the effort to see them whenever they are at one of my festivals.

The support acts were by far the worst I have seen in a long time and seemed so ill-fitted to Metronomy’s music (I blame the NME). There was the Cocknbullkid, who made music that sounded a bit like Florence and the Machine crossed with a soul singer, and then there was Giggs who was a bland rapper with some dj beats in the background. Yawn yawn yawn. Luckily the venue packed out by the time Metronomy hit the stage and they showed us a good time. There was quite a lot of material from their upcoming album ‘The English Riviera’ and it seemed quite mature in comparison to their earlier work. Still very nice and danceable, but I think they have lost some of their quirkiness from before. I did enjoy the new single though ‘She Wants’ and they blasted out some favourites in the form of ‘Heartbreaker’ and ‘Radio Ladio’. All in all it was a very enjoyable night, if I block out everything that happened before Metronomy, and I even managed to convert my friend to their awesomeness.

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