overlap

Last night I saw the living legend that is Bob Dylan. Hnnnnnnnnnnnnn! Tickets said showtime was 7.30, the band came on at 7.45, were off by 9.40 and it was back out into daylight and home. It's been a very long time since I've been in a crowd that gave quite that sort of ovation to someone, and it was a cracking show. A nice hot venue meant I had two people fainting within touching distance of me, and for a guy of 65, old Bob still drives his band very hard and they were tight as hell. I'm not a particular fan, and there's sometimes a bit of novelty in going to someone I don't see all that often (seen him just the once before) so I had a great time. Tremendous - puts a lot of people a third of his age to shame!

Labels: Bob Dylan, gigs, music

There's someting about wine-powered typing that makes for a lot of fun. On friday night I went to see "Europe's Longest Standing KISS Tribute Band" - Dressed To Kill. I've seen the real KISS, and these were at least as much fun, playing for nearly two and a half hours and doing a bunch of great songs I have not listened to in ages. You can see how seriously they take their act here, feel free to stare, point and giggle til you've had enough. Now, in matters entirely unconnected with blokes old enough to know better wearing too much make up, I've been finding that some websites do not reflect what is actually in stock. On friday I was looking at a handbag again that I have been in two minds whether I really liked, but by saturday when I'd decided I did like it and went back for it, it was gone. Which makes for a few fruitless miles driven. In between enjoying the fruits of my most recent make up shopping, I am unable to be too bothered about shops' stocking policies, and remain tempted by the idea of shopping on those websites which promised more than their shops could deliver. In the global scheme of things, it's no big deal.

Labels: Dressed To Kill, gigs, KISS, make up, music, rock

Got my prints back from the weekend. Once I'd got into the sea I went through three dozen frames in about ten minutes, partly because I wasn't sure what I was going to get out of it, and the primary aim was experimentation in any case. I'm usually very careful with stuff, but I am prone to using things to destruction - if you look at some of the prints you can see there are scratches on the negatives, and that's a sign of how hard my cameras get used; for that very reason I tend to have cheap but decent stuff rather than expensive, high quality items that I'd be afraid to take out of the house. Here you can see my legs in my cheap supermarket wetsuit and the sea, taken with a 'water-resistant' camera which I got off ebay for under twenty quid. And you can also see what it looks like when you've got two foot of breaking wave just in front of your face - probably not the place to be worrying about getting a camera wet!

At the moment I'm having a particularly painted fingers period, and here are the two shades I'm wearing most. In this picture my nails are done with the pinker colour of the two, though I think I may just be more fond of the other shade. Funny how two distinctly different shades in their bottles can both look a suitably natural kind of shiny rather than bright enough that I'd be uncomfortable with them for normal daily wear. Update: now here's something about the difference between artificial light and daylight; in the harsh light of day it turns out they are just a little bit pinker than I thought last night - see below. And after at least one 'interesting' reaction today that I can happily live without, I'm happy to call that a lesson learned!

Labels: make up

This is the view I woke up to this morning - slightly less sunny and bright than yesterday, but I've definitely woken up to worse! And this is possibly my favourite picture from the 250-odd I shot in just over 24 hours. If you needed an answer to how digital photography differs from traditional analogue photography, there's your answer right there. There are more on flickr but this is digitalis purpurea at its most digital! Hope your weekend was as much fun as mine was!

Well, let's not get carried away now.

I love my job, but I especially love the freedom it allows me to not work especially hard, and to follow my own ideas for exactly how to do what I do. And while that's something I'm happy to soak up - I figure I've paid my dues and I've done enough rubbish jobs to know when I'm on to a good thing - it's not something that's going to take me anywhere in the longer term. There is
no prospect for promotion or advancement as there is no more senior version of what I do, nor any department or group I could potentially move up into.

So it was inevitable that when an unexpected opportunity arose earlier this week, I couldn't not push myself forward towards something that may or may not come off. The prospect is a mildly scary but perfectly natural one from where I am now, so we'll see what happens.

What surprises me most about this is that having taken the time to say the right things to the right person whose eventual decision it will be to include me in further developments or not, the subject concerned has remained on my mind, and I know exactly what my first questions in that area will be.

It's still conjecture at this stage, and it's only work after all, but even though it's not like me to seek out change, I feel good about the prospect.Time will tell if anything comes of it.

There's something about the sneak preview value of quiet acoustic gigs where new material is being tried out that elevates them above and beyond higher profile shows. Whether it's getting to hear a version of a work in progress that subsequently vanishes without a trace, or finding how something has been updated, it's one of the few ways of getting that little bit closer to what lurks in the near future.

And so it was on tuesday evening that I left work a little early to drive to another town I haven't visited in many years, find an unfamiliar but remarkable little venue and enjoy the company of a handful of friends of mine along with a number of old songs dusted off anew, and a few new songs being aired.

Like the first show on any tour when there is no clear idea of exactly what to expect, this was a great show and I'm really glad I went. Despite the drive and the late night. Here's to next time!

Labels: gigs, Miles Hunt, music

Regular but infrequent events like the World Cup finals can inspire a little bit of mental stock-taking, and the other day I was reminded of the circumstances in which I watched the last lot four years ago. Plenty has happened over the subsequent period, and from this distance it's probably fair to say that that year is about the point where I really started to feel like an adult, and largely down to that set of circumstances reaching a final conclusion. Not necessarily a pleasant one, but certainly a satisfying conclusion as it finally put an end to a few things that I'd lived with, often with some difficulty, for a remarkably long time. One of the things I learned was to appreciate things while they are there, for the good stuff it's a reminder to enjoy it while I can, and for the less good stuff it's a healthy prompt to hold on to the fact that nothing is forever and that this too shall pass. In passing interests then, today I unexpectedly hit a point that I imagine many people must skirt or broach at some point; this morning I found myself lovingly handling a staggeringly expensive pair of trousers. Fabulously soft to the touch, and reduced to a ridiculously low percentage of the original price as marked on the proper label. My bargain-radar was going off the scale, and fond as I am of jokes at my own expense, I still managed to turn away from what would represent fantastic giggle-per-expense value. All the same, I'm happy to say that fancy designer label or not, even in a rather splendid pale tan colour, there is never a good time for leather trousers. Having found them quite by chance in a shop a few miles up the road, that's where I will leave them.

No, I've no idea how I could possibly end up with that sort of patterning either. Despite the application of sunscreen.

This was the moment it finally started to seem real - the picture above shows a flightcase with the bright yellow tape marked JOURNEY FOH (front of house) - that I was finally going to get to see Journey. I have clear recollections of listening to them in the days when I was cycling to gigs, long before the thought of driving (or even flying) to gigs occurred. It's a long time ago. Some time just over a year ago I was updating my records, and looking at the numbers I realised there was a chance that I could get a couple of round numbers to coincide. For no good reason whatsoever, except it seemed like an amusing stunt if I could possibly pull it off. And so it came to pass that I spent yesterday celebrating the big occasion of my 500th gig; once it was possible that the grail-like appearance of Journey (doing their first shows in the UK since 1980) might fit, I've done my best to engineer things towards that result. I could gush for hours about why Journey, and may yet do so, but what amounts to my life's work in facts and figures comes down to the following. It's an utterly rocktastic 666 different bands doing 1,166 sets in 177 venues in 60 towns and cities, in 7 countries. Fitting that in in just under twenty years means I've averaged a gig every fourteen and a half days over that period, which puts it into context why I often fail to appreciate the 'night out' aspect that gigs can have for some people. And while there's the odd one that does feel a bit like hard work (yes I mean you, RW!) for the majority of the time I'm having a ball. It's true that there are places and indeed countries I've only visited for gigs, and I've been unfashionable in several different languages and a multitude of musical genres - ultimately that's what I do. I'm very lucky that I don't have the sort of commitments that stop me from spending this proportion of time and money in the pursuit of live music, and I'm well aware that that may not be forever. Which is one of the reasons for celebrating yesterday - I've now seen almost every band I could wish to, from old school Brit metal titans like Diamond Head, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to 90s indie heroes Carter USM, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Pop Will Eat Itself, from classic credible rockers like Young, Springsteen and Dylan to long gone performance superstars like Wolfsbane, The Grip and Chrome Molly who you're unlikely ever to have heard of. From true pioneers like Tom Paxton, Duane Eddy and Sonny Curtis to lo-fi diy acts like [bis], Helen Love and Disco, from popular 'legends' Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (all rubbish!) to the novelty-tinged genius of Frank Sidebottom, John Otway and Half Man Half Biscuit, from ... well, the list goes on. Deen Castronovo + Neal Schon + Steve Augeri + Ross Valory + Jonathan Cain = Journey Above: Steve and Neal - Open Arms! Below: Neal and Steve Lay It Down

Labels: gigs, Journey, rock

On saturday morning I got up earlier than I do for work, and I've just got home from a cracking day of music. I now have a small amount of sunburn, and a real need to rock up the stairs to bed, but I've got just one more thing to say*, and that's Don't Stop Believing.

* I'll have something more sensible to say and some pictures later...

Labels: gigs, Journey, rock

Well, let's not get carried away just yet. But barring mishaps, friday and saturday nights will see me doing one thing that it never occurred to me would happen, and more importantly something I always hoped for but never dreamed I'd get to do. Saturday should see me back in a great big field I last visited fifteen years ago, watching a band I have previously (and in all seriousness) threatened to cross the atlantic to see, so likely was the chance of getting to see them here. I've seen the guitarist play in two different side project bands, one great and one less so, but this is the real thing and it feels like all my birthdays and christmases come at once to think the day is finally approaching.

Labels: gigs, Journey, rock