Archive for Music
War of the Worlds – Musical Stage Show
I went to see the stage show of Jeff Wayne’s musical version of War of the Worlds last night. And it was AWESOME! Seriously, it was amazing. I’d have gone to see it again tonight if I’d had a ticket.
So what’s it all about then? Well, H.G Wells wrote the original story ‘The War of the Worlds’, back in 1898. It told the tale of a Martian invasion of Earth using giant walking fighting machines with heat rays, and was remarkably ahead of it’s time. Then there was the 1953 film, and the recent remake with Tom Cruise (boo). But in 1978 a guy called Jeff Wayne set the story to music and released a concept album. My dad had the album on vinyl, and I remember seeing it when I was younger and thinking it was very, very cool.
So when Jeff Wayne gathered most of the original cast and went on tour, I jumped at the chance to go and see it. The entire album was preformed live by a mini orchestra, with Jeff Wayne conducting, and people on stage singing the songs. While this was going on, a massive screen behind the stage showed a computer animation of the story unfolding – narrated by a giant floating holographic head of Richard Burton (the original narrator, now sadly deceased). To cap it all off nicely, there was a massive 30ft replica of one of the Martian tripods on the stage that lit-up, moved it’s body, fired smoke and a red “heat ray” into the audience. It was sooooo cool! 
I managed to snap a couple of pictures; you can just make out the tripod in them. As you can see, it takes up the whole stage. Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture.
1. Intermission, with a good view of the tripod.
2. The second half. There were actually images on the screen, but they didn’t come out.
3. The end. The satisfied crowd begin to leave.
Conclusion: It was a great show and a great night out. If they go on tour next year, then I’d love to see it again. If you’re a fan of the album, you’ll love it too! 
9/10
In the meantime, the official website for the show can be found here, and the Wikipedia page for ‘The War of the Worlds’ trivia is here.
Proms in the Park 2007
I took a trip up to Swansea at the weekend for the ‘Last Night of the Proms’. We quite fancied going to the main event at the Albert Hall (I’ve seen many previous years Last Nights on TV), but it turned out you needed to go to at least ten other proms in the season to get a ticket for the grand finalé. This was out of the question, so we decided on Singleton Park, the venue in Swansea. At least that way we could take a picnic.
1. The gates opened at 4.30, which is when we arrived. 2. Nat enjoys the afternoon sun. 3. The crowds gather.
4. The show is about to start. 5. Fireworks! 6. More Fireworks!
And we weren’t disappointed! The BBC put on a brilliant show, playing a lot of great classical music, and we were treated to an excellent firework display at the end (as seen above).
The only thing that caught me by surprise was the minor differences between the Welsh proms, and the event I was so used to seeing televised from London, i.e. the singing of a few songs in Welsh and the Welsh national anthem. Obviously this makes total sense – we were in Wales after all! – it’s just that it never occured to me that there would be any differences. Still, it was interesting to hear something a little unexpected.
Isle of Wight Festival – 2007
It should be obvious from the title, but we paid a return visit to the Isle of Wight Festival this year. We had a three-day weekend ticket and Bex was kind enough to put us up again; the proximity of her flat to the festival fields making this a stupidly convenient arrangement.
It was easily as cool and well organised as last year, with a lot of good acts and some blisteringly hot weather. Bands that put on a especially fine show where as follows: Groove Armada, Wolfmother, Snow Patrol, Keane (the bits I saw), Muse (apart from the encore – more later) and of course the Rolling Stones (even if I did only recognise about 4 or 5 songs). I’m not sure what else to say that wouldn’t just be repeating last year’s account, or reiterating what other people have already said. So I think I’ll take a brief photographic interlude before I mention the one or two minor bad points.
1. Arrival. 2. Looking for a good spot. 3. Groove Armada.
4. Friday night crowds. 5. Snow Patrol 6. Jimi Hendrix sculpture.
7. The Red Arrows treated us to a fine display on Sunday afternoon. 8. The waiting crowds. 9. Keane (I think).
10. The Rolling Stones. 11. The Rolling Stone again. 12. The festival funfair at night.
13. The Rolling Stones once more. 14. The firework finale.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a very good time and will definitely go again next year (if Bex will put us up again ), but a few minor things bugged me about this year’s festivities. Firstly, where did all the chavs come from? There seemed to be a load this year for some reason. Here’s another question; why pay £105 to walk around a field without a shirt on, ignoring the bands, getting really sun burnt, drinking cider and generally looking pissed off? Couldn’t they do that in a local park for free? Bloody chavs, I hope next year they spend their ticket money on a ‘Bullet in the Head’ voucher (redeemable at all good gun shops) instead.
Secondly, people seemed to be a lot more careless with their rubbish this year. There was so much spread across the grass by the end of each day, it made sitting down a little risky once night fell and you couldn’t see anything. There were large red wheelie-bins spread liberally across the site, and if you can’t spot a huge red oblong then, erm, how do you make it through a normal day without dying?
Of course you’ll notice these two complaints were about the other people there – I can’t really fault the festival itself. My final whinge regards Muse’s ridiculous half an hour encore. Great for Muse fans I’m sure, but when you’ve been in a field for nearly twelve hours and they won’t open the Newport exit next to the stage until the band is done, it gets a little annoying. So you’ve got a distortion pedal for your guitar? Well aren’t you the f**king king of all things musical? Now get off the stage, we want to go home! :p
It may seem like I spent more time complaining than praising in this blog entry, but I really did have fun. If I haven’t mentioned some aspect of the weekend, just assume it was awesome. And on that note, I’ll see you all there next year (hopefully)!
Resurgence
I had a great night out last night with Alex, Bex, Sarah and a few of her friends. We went to Resurgence, a goth/metal night club event held at Scandals in Portsmouth. The official website is here, and the ‘Don’t Stay In’ page is here. I thought it was brilliant, although I was pretty tanked on arrival, so my appraisal of the event took place through a slightly fuzzy lens. Anyway, it was held in a dark basement, lots of metal was played, and everyone was wearing black – what more do you want from or need to know about a goth night? I’ll definitely be going again!
Tenacious D on Radio 1.
As the title suggests, Tenacious D were on Radio 1 for about 40/50 mins last night (Thursday), as guests of Colin Murray. It was amusing stuff, but not especially groundbreaking. If you missed it then you’ve got seven days to catch it via Radio 1′s “Listen Again” feature. Might be worth checking out if you’re a big fan of the D.
MP3 to MP4 Converter.
Well, sort of. I’ve been using iTunes for about a year now, as I got sick of being jerked-around on P2P networks. Apple’s music download service is all well and good, but the files come in the mp4 format, which is of little use if you don’t own an iPod (I use my phone as an mp3 player to save carrying around extra gizmos), limiting you to listening to the music on the built-in iTunes player.
My initial solution was to wait until I had enough songs, then burn them to a CD, then rip the CD to mp3s, which was irritating and time consuming. But recently Sven pointed me in the direction of Audacity, a free sound editing program that can record the output of other programs – like iTunes for example. If you’ve been suffering from the same problem as me, and are yet to find a solution, then I can’t recommend this program enough. It was simple to set-up and use, especially if you’ve had experience with something like Adobe Premier.
Two quick tips when using Audacity. 1. The default recording mode is mono, but you can switch it to stereo on the ‘Preferences’ menu. I mention this because it took me a while to find. 2. Make sure the output of the program that’s generating the sound isn’t too high, otherwise your mp3 will come out with noticeable distortion.
A Cultured Outing.
Contrary to any impression that this blog/website may give, I don’t just cower from my mortal enemy – direct sunlight – by sitting in cool, dark places watching films, playing games and building EM experiments*. I do cultural stuff too. This Friday evening just gone, a friend and I went to the Haslar Hospital “Proms in the Park” – a ‘Last Night’ style affair replete with classical music from the Royal Marines band, a picnic, fireworks finale and a Spitfire fly past. I enjoyed it thoroughly, as did she – it was certainly a very British experience!
The only bad thing about it (well, ish), was that it was being held to mark the closure of Haslar RN Hospital. They had a large screen to show us the band close up, and this was hijacked during the interval to display sepia photos from Haslar’s past. We found these interesting to see (along with the Windows error message that interrupted the slide show at one point), and I suspect they would have been profoundly tear-jerking for anyone more closely associated with the venue.
Overall, an enjoyable evening. So much so that we’ve decided to try and go to the ‘real’ Proms next year. I’ll leave you with this quick snap of the stage.
* I’d like to make it clear that this is a joke, before I’m mistaken for a Goth or similar creature of the night. Direct sunlight is not my mortal enemy; we are in fact on nodding terms when we occasionally pass in the corridor.
Isle of Wight Festival – 2006
Wow. That was fun. I refer of course to the Isle of Wight Festival ’06. Along with ‘slow and steady wins the race’, ‘a picture tells a thousand words’ is another adage I firmly believe in. The full tale of this weekend would take thousands of words to relate, so brace yourself for photos…
Image 01 – Alex and Bex look a little lost in the huge open area in front of the stage. We arrived shortly before the gates opened on Friday afternoon, so there was a chance to look around before the crowds started filing in.
Image 02 – The crowds begin to gather. At this point the grass was still in pristine condition, but after three days of litter dropping and trampling by 55,000 pairs of feet, things were pretty ‘yuck’.
Image 03 – Getting there early allowed us to get up close and personal with Friday’s bands. This included Goldfrapp, Placebo and The Prodigy.
Image 04 – Waiting inbetween bands. This is a truely awful photo of me; they say the camera adds 100 lbs, so remember how many people were there and how many cameras could have been pointing at me as this shot was taken. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few spy satellites were passing over head at this moment too.
Image 05 – The Prodigy put on one hell of a show; a definate highlight of the weekend. Having heard ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ blasted through Wilkie’s car speakers on a significant number Friday nights, it was inspiring to hear it done justice over a truely impressive sound system. This was not the only crowd pleaser; ‘Breathe’ and ‘Firestarter’ also ilicted a similar reponse.
Image 06 – To help us maintain a ‘festival’ spirit, we all invested in Henna tattoos. Alex had the Metallica logo inked onto his shoulder, while I opted for Iron Maiden. Bex had a symbol representing Aquarius – her star sign – drawn onto her ankle. I’d also like to note that I made a further investment, and bought a straw cowboy hat (not pictured).
Image 07 – If it weren’t for my digital camera’s conflicting refresh rate, this big screen would be showing Richard Ashcroft. His set was good, the classics like ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ really got the crowd moving. Unfortunately he let himself down by trying – and failing – to be a modern day John Lennon, one moment telling us not to vote for Cameron or Blair because they are (quote) “f*ckig liars” (unquote), then shortly afterwards telling us that (quote) “rock and roll and politics don’t mix”. Nice. It’s almost enough to make me want to go to the trouble of committing electoral fraud and voting for both of them, just to defy him!
Image 08 – A distant image of Coldplay, for many the defining act of the weekend. The people in the foreground looking off to the right are looking at a large screen so we did have a better view of them than this. As none of us are especially fans of Chris Martin and the boys, we had originally planned to sneak off after a few songs, so we could both beat the crowds and claimed to have seen them live. As it was, we stayed for the entire set, so very good was the show they put on for us. Top marks.
Now that the photos are out of the way, I suppose I should rate some of the bands I liked, and some I liked less. In the former category we have: Coldplay, Procol Harum, and the Delays. In the later category, The Kooks, whose performance I found to be a little ‘meh’. Only Procol Harum and the Delays should expect any album-related custom from me.
Finally, a few words on the event itself; it was certainly well organised, everyone seemed to know what they were doing. I was particularly impressed with the torrent of buses layed on to speed us to the ferries on Sunday evening. No sooner had a bus departed, full to bursting with content festival goers, then another arrived to fill it’s place.
Perhaps more importantly then the buses, food and drink were in plentiful supply, indeed free Strongbow Cider was available to those who chose to loiter outside the Strongbow tent. I was disappointed with the war time ration-like portion of sausage and chips I purchased on Friday night; based on it’s appearance I suspected the sausage to be made of spam, and the remainder of my 4 worth of chips to have been confiscated for the building of additional Spitfires! I can however recommend the pasties, potato wedges, jacket potatoes and corn on the cob, all of which were tasty and value for money.
If you’ve simultaneously encountered both myself and a dog, you’ll have noticed that I have a soft spot for man’s canine companions, most usually expressed through emitting a muffled “awww” sound. So as you can imagine I considered the amount of sniffer dogs on patrol to be a decided bonus. Not only were they to be found at the entrance to the festival itself, but they also greeted us at the ferry terminal. But despite there best efforts, pot did get through – we witnessed people brazenly smoking joints on several occasions. Make of this what you will.
So all in all a great three days. Would I go again next year? Definately, although this will of course rely on Bex being able to put us up for another three nights.
Photo Credit: Thank you very much to Alex for Image 4 and Image 5.
Isle of Wight Festival, Catchphrases and Missing Images.
Woggers, Bex and myself have aquired tickets for this years Isle of Wight Festival! Although it’s not until June, I’m quite excited about it already. Sure there’s no particular band there that I’m desperate to see, but there will be a few bands that I’m moderately interested in seeing; Coldplay, Goldfrapp, Foo Fighters and Prodigey. Plus it’ll be something different – almost like a mini-holiday – and it’s a good excuse to take the Friday off work. Conveniently Bex lives a short distance from the venue, so we’ll be imposing on her for a few days; so much easier than camping. The only problem is that I have to be back at work on Monday morning, so we’re heading back late on Sunday, which will be…interesting, but worth it!
Also, I’ve noticed two more examples today of people using the phrase ‘weeee’ on internet forums. Alex’s catchphrase is spreading! Still, it’s nice to see a new global craze coming out of our group… 
Finally, I do actually have another web comic entry to upload, but I can’t find the image file I scanned it to on my home PC, and I don’t have the original any more. Grrrr, most annoying. So more web comic goodness as soon I find it.
