To the lovely young lady currently doing "email marketing" but wanting to be an epidemiologist, who I met on the Central line tonight, heading West, with the tray of mince pies (which she shared freely) on her way to another pub quiz, the word I was trying to think of was "Bioinformatics".

This was a public surreality message.

Grand Rose Band at Dirty South, Lewisham.

I've seen these guys a couple of times and have a few of their tracks on my iPod and they Rock! It was the most bizarre gig in the back of a pub, but it's the pub where Kate Bush once served, so that's all right then!

Quireboys and Planet of Women at the Mean Fiddler

Great show ladies and gents, lots of pictures on my flickr account. But sometimes you just take the picture that's The One:

Fame! Can Fortune be far away?

Some of my pictures are now the bio pics for the band Fortune Drive!

Quireboys at The Fleece, Bristol (again)



You'd have though that after twenty years in which they'd played tens
of thousands of people in stadiums and festivals all round the world
that playing to a couple of hundred people in a pokey club in Bristol
would be a chore. Not a bit of it! They blasted through the set with
two encored. Keith tucked away at the back, Pip rock solid as always
and the front guys, Spike, Guy and Paul jumping around as much as the
confines of the Fleece's stage allows.

Afterwards, the guys were really up as Big Things are on the point of
happening again.

Looking forward to the recording of the DVD at the Mean Fiddler on
Friday!

Oh, dear...

You Are a Henna Gaijin!

You're not Japanese, but you wish you were! You can use chopsticks with your eyes closed, and you've memorized hundreds of Kanji. You even answer your phone "moshi moshi." While the number of anime videos you've seen is way higher than the number of dates you've been on, there's hope. Play the sexy, mysterous gaijin, and you'll have plenty of Japanese meat.

What's Your Japanese Subculture?

Blackbud and Fortune Drive at Moles in Bath.

Having been in a bit of a gig drought pretty much since pigging out at Donnington, I was looking forward to seeing the lovely Blackbud in London this week. Unfortunately, I got called away just as they were about to go on and while the Barfly was briefly hit by a power cut andtoo!

However, they also played Moles in Bath last night so we trolled along to have a good chill. But! It turned out that Fortune Drive were supporting. I'd seen them in Bristol about 18 months ago supporting (or being supported by?!) the lovely Clumsy lads. They were OK, but nothing to write home about.

What a difference a year makes! Last night they were tight, raucous, edgy and downright confident. Their songwriting craft has also taken a major leap forward pulling out every trick to get and keep the audience on their side: tempo changes, dead stops, vocal hooks, the lot. Excellent!

Blackbud's homecoming is always good. Is it really only two years since these callow youths won the battle of the bands there? Moles was compeltely rammed, seemingly with adoring young ladies muttering "I was at school with them you know"! We weren't disappointed. Old songs, new songs, slow songs breaking unexpectedly into longer, faster jams, strains of, dare I say it, Dire Straits, a drum fill nicked from Deep Purple, shades of Stone Roses, Pink Floyd but all mashed into Blackbud's unique style.

Nice.

WWWAC Hang night - oh the fun, the debauchery, oh no, someone had a camera!

Arrr!!!! It's that day again, me hearties.


You are The Cap'n!

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some slit the throats of any man that stands between them and the mantle of power. You never met a man you couldn't eviscerate. Not that mindless violence is the only avenue open to you - but why take an avenue when you have complete freeway access? You are the definitive Man of Action. You are James Bond in a blousy shirt and drawstring-fly pants. Your swash was buckled long ago and you have never been so sure of anything in your life as in your ability to bend everyone to your will. You will call anyone out and cut off their head if they show any sign of taking you on or backing down. You cannot be saddled with tedious underlings, but if one of your lieutenants shows an overly developed sense of ambition he may find more suitable accommodations in Davy Jones' locker. That is, of course, IF you notice him. You tend to be self absorbed - a weakness that may keep you from seeing enemies where they are and imagining them where they are not.

What's Yer Inner Pirate?
brought to you by The Official Talk Like A Pirate Web Site. Arrrrr!

Legendary Steward at the Snickers Stage.

Donnington People

And now some random moments from Download 2005!

Download 2005.

And so up the M42 to the legendary Castle Donningon. I admit to being a Donnington virgin. Never made it in the early eighties when it was at its height but I really enjoyed this weekend. It was interesting the difference in the audiences over the three days. The first day was quite emo, the second emo and rock and the last day very old skool rock. And of course, everything stopped on Saturday to pay homage to Ozzy who was utterly awesome of course.

Biggest Surprise: Dresden Dolls. A drumming mime and a chick on the electric piano? They could have disappeared under a hail of bottles but totally won the tent over.


Biggest Disappointment: Alter Bridge. For me, the recorded stuff is great (not knowing Creed at all) and I'd been told to watch the guitarist but the stage show just didn't come across. The singer poncing around didn't help.


Best Canadians: 3 Inches of Blood. They came out and did their half-hour at top speed. Great stuff.


Best audience participation: Bowling for Soup. From getting each side of the audience to chant "wankers!" at the other to defiling an inflatable sheep with a banana, they were just plain good fun.


Best Scandi band: A tie between Apocalyptica and In Flames.

Best overheard audience comment: When the blonde in Apocalyptica took the mike and introcduced then next song in his gravelly voice the guy behind me yelped: "holy shit! it's a bloke!". Took the words out of my mouth, mate.

Two bands who should have been there: Biomechanical and Mendeed.

Biggest assholes: the drunks next to me during Him. And even then, they were just having fun and were pretty funny too. She was cute though :-)

Least regretted miss: Velvet Revolver.

Most regretted miss: System of a Down.

Just plain the biggest: Ozzy. 'nuff said.


Day 3:

Energerica (yes, energetic)

Saints (why?)

Still Remains (pretty good)


3 Inches of Blood (ripped it up)

The Glitterati (hit their spot)


Dresden Dolls (wow!)


Eighties Matchbox etc. etc. (nearly was a disaster)


Day 2:

A (good)

Bowling for Soup (fun)

Alter Bridge (disappointing)


Anthrax (ripped the place a new one)

Him (yawn, but daughter loved it)


Reuben (kicked it)

In Flames (ripped the place another one)


Ozzy who is THE KING.

Day 1:

Planet or Women (ROCK!)


Fozzy (ok)
Lordi (funny)
Underoath (good)
Apocalyptica (awesome)
The Bled (can't remember)
InMe (ish)
My Chemical Romance (the kids liked it)
The Used (ditto)

Spike at Riffs in Swindon.



What's to say? An absolutely, blinding, rocking and rolling night! With added cake!.

Clumsy, Bristol Folk House

You might all think that all I ever go to is RAWK concerts, but tonight was a change. We headed down to the Folk House on Park Street in Bristol for the wonderful, lovely Clumsy folks. They were showcasing the young talent that they'd mentored on the Remix course and then did a set of their own. Great stuff! Special mention to "The Naturals" who flipped from Stones-style to punk in seconds!

Cradle of Filth and Mendeed, Bristol Academy

What a difference from the MCR gig where I clearly just didn't get it. Tonight was much more my kind of thing. Mendeed came out looking like a bunch of trainee accountants but hit us with the obligatory 45 minutes of heavy-as-shit rock. Special mention has to go to the drummer who despite looking like a gust of wind would blow him away, was the anchor round which both rhythm and melody, such as it is, flowed.

4/5 - I hope they do well, get a stylist and I'd like to see them pack out the Fleece

Cradle of Filth put on a damn fine show too. Nearly ninety minutes of pure rock theatre with the little guy running up and down, gargoyles, giant puppets, spark-shooting podium dancers and the rest; possibly the biggest mosh I've seen stretching from four bodies from the rail to four bodies from the sound desk too.

3/5 - Good theatre, OK music, the kids were certainly down with it. Missing something though.

Grand Rose Band at Moles, Bath

This one's a tale of serendipity. I bumped into a guy and his sister debating laptops in PC World. We twisted their arms and they made the right choice: the Mac. Turns out the guy, Alex, is the drummer in The Grand Rose Band. I'd enjoyed the mp3's on their site and so jumped at the chance of seeing them in the intimate settings of Moles in Bath.

Fantastic.

An hour of superb guitaring rawkingness later, Moles was rubble. Well, not quite, but you get my drift. For crying out loud someone, please sign these guys and get them on the road! They beat the pants off almost all bands I've seen in such a small club and their sound and presence would translate to a late afternoon slot on the NME stage at V for sure (hint!).

No pics, I was having fun.

Bristol at night.

I have a magical picture of Finsbury Avenue Square in Broadgate at night which I'm going to print out large. However, in the short term, click the image to see ones I took of Bristol at night!

I admit it now: I was fully prepared not to like Green Day. Their one and a half minute speed-pop just seemed eminently disposable and designed to appeal to a particular market segment.

I was completely won over.

Firstly, kudos to "New Found Glory" for pumping out 45 minutes of fuck-you skate punk that got the kids nicely warmed up for the main event.

Green Day themselves opened with "American Idiot" and rocked their socks off for the next hour and an three-quarters with complete and utter showmanship. They used every trick in the book, flashbangs, flamethrowers, tickertape, audience members taking over instruments on stage (hi Tristan!), singalongs and much more, to keep the audience completely pumped.

Superb and worth the stupid drive to see them.

The usual pont and click pictures here.

Last night was Megadeth at the Birmingham Academy with Diamond Head in support. The latter were good fun. It would be churlish to complain about Megadeth - it did exactly what it says on the can. It was half an hour of massive, goes all the way to eleven, speed metal before the band even took a breath. The sound was pretty poor, which probably didn't really matter to the audience who were clearly getting off on it. Good luck to them!

Shaky, blurry, audience pics here.

Demonstrating that donor fatigue hasn't set in, the Borderline was packed last night with rockers of all ages, genders, shapes and sizes last night for Strumpfest 2005 in aid of Multiple Sclerosis and in honour of legendary Totalrock boarder Strumpet.
It kicked off at half past three, took an acoustic turn halfway with a short set from a couple of the guys from Thunder and wrapped up with a blistering set from Hurricane Party.

Suey did a fantastic job getting at all together and putting on a fantastic event.

A few pictures of the Party here:

http://homepage.mac.com/davehodg/PhotoAlbum42.html