Happy Fokker

Just back from the glorious Netherlands at the weekend. Roadburn Festival 2009, what a blast, absolutely the best rock festival I have ever been to, just wonderful in every way, from the weather to the venue to the vodka to the bands to the t-shirts to the talent to the heroic facial hair. Clearly such a fantastic country as well, 'tis a total pisser that I've eventually had to return...

I'm not going to waffle on as I'm getting a bit cheesed off with the whole blog update thingy, too bloody busy doing a billion other things. Don't know how those bastiches on Twatter have the patience to update the planet on the intricacies of their bowel movements when I can't be arsed filing a brief status report every coupla months. Anyhoo, here are my semi-salient recent observations...

• KLM's aeroplane of choice for GLA - AMS was a lovely little Fokker. No, Boardman, keep away, keep away !!! I'm so glad I finally got that DS. Big Bang Mini, World Championship Poker, and Tetris DS made the journey(s) mercifully quick.
  

• Holland is like some parallel alternate Scotland where the streets are clean, public transport is both utterly reliable and plentifully available, and the town centres seemingly aren't chock full of either gormless fucking automatons or vicious, sub-human chavscum. Cyclists are still ignorant, reckless cnuts (sic), though at least they are confined to their own specialist (as in special school) lanes where they can, in theory, only injure each other. Generally a wonderful place, I do so want to move there, really. Shame it'll be under the North Sea by 2030, niet goed.

• I spoke as much (little) Dutch as I dared but they are all so damned multi-lingual over there that they can't help but interrupt your struggle through Nederlands and happily continue on in English of a standard way more intelligible than that of 95% of the populace of Greater Glasgow. Indeed, I stopped all the spreekt u Engels stuff whenever I struggled as most folk I talked to looked offended at the thought that they might not speak English.

• Roadburn represents the boutique festival concept done right. Indoors, in a lovely venue like a three way between the Barras, the ABC and Embra Playhoose, well organised, safe and well catered, despite being totally sold out, there were no queues for the bars or the toilets, plenty of space to chill out for watching bands like Amon Duul II or Mono from a prostrate position (as directed by your general practitioner). I've wanted to go to it for years and now I want to go back every year. Bloomin' heck, Cathedral and Saint Vitus on the same bill, one after the other, where else is such a thing even possible ? Only way they could top that would be getting Trouble and Sabbath together - hey, a chap can dream, can't he ???
  

Righty ho, that's me shot my bolt (figuratively speaking) for now. Might be back for an update in three months. Or maybe not.

Deaf Sentence

Had another brammer of a time last week, went down south to catch a few concerts and generally doss about. What did I learn on my travels ?

1. There's a street in Lambeth with two (yes, two!!!) Greggs the bakers on it! I was so unnerved that I bought myself two sausage rolls and one chocolate doughnut, a potentially fatal inversion of the sacred order. If you're still able to read this, I'd guess the universe hasn't collapsed in on itself quite yet.
   
   
2. The Imperial War Museum is a truly wonderful thing... but sadly confirmed to me the continuing development of a worrying fascination with, erm, old buses... hmm...
   
   
3. Saw Control at the flicks and was definitively reminded that the lovely Alexandra Maria Lara is very much in the running for being my third favourite (adopted) German...
   
   
4. Neil Peart is the only drummer in the world who punters come back from the bar to watch perform his solo spot... (oh, and Rush are still a magnificent live band).
   
   

Anyways, what I really went down there to see was this :



Don't quite know if it was the loudest thing I've ever heard - the Moggies and Sunn 0))) are damn good competition - but it was pretty intense nonetheless. Still didn't get around to visiting that giant squid, tho'... for shame!

The Bam Flies Down (On) Old Trafford Way

Flew down to Manchester on Saturday, on a nice wee de Havilland Dash 8, no less - thankfully the weather was nice, those ickle prop planes don't half move around when a wind gets up. Anyhoo, I was going down to see G*n*s*s at Old Trafford so wasn't all that worried about the prospect of hitting the ground at 500mph and meeting a fiery death. After all, I had the Drum Duet to "look forward" to. Yes, I was trying not to look forward at all - mucho "what the f*** were you thinking, ya big fud" moments ever since I bought the tix. Oh dear...

However, things got much better once I got down there. The weather was scorching hot, the hotel was a little beauty and the folk I met down there were all pretty damn top notch - those folk from oop north are the salt of the earth, they really are. Plenty of Scots around as per usual, adding to the healthy bonhomie you find amongst groups of balding old fart proggers of all persuasions. What a magnificent stadium, I have to say. Enormous. I was up in the gods back in the east stand facing the stage and had a good, if somewhat distant, view of the proceedings. Heck, as a theatre of dreams it maybe even trumps the mighty Douglas Park but, hey, let's not get too carried away here...

Well, what about the band then ? Er, um, they were pretty damn good, actually. Not enough old stuff for the big man's liking, of course, but it was all rather pleasant, mucho well played light prog goodness abounding. Old Phil really is a talented little fella and should be highly praised for the services he's done for the standing of baldy auld bawbags all across the world. Not a great deal of Peter-era stuff, sadly, or even much old Phil stuff - although they played Ripples and Los Endos from my favourite album (which at least gave me a cheap thrill) most of the set was Duke onwards as wearily expected. Ho hum. I did find my mind wandering during the longueurs to visions of the stadium filled to the brim on a normal business day to watch ManYoo stuffing seven past Roma or going toe to toe with the real Reds. Now that would have been something to savour. But, ultimately, the Genesis lads did all right in the end (there, I can even bring myself to type their name!). I know what I like (in their back catalogue). And at least they didn't play anything off Abacab, right ???

Made with the help of -

Justice "†" - I'm still down with the kids, I tell ya. Anyways, how could I not like a band that plays in front of a giant, illuminated cross ???

Nothin' but Trouble...

My first pilgrimage of the year last Monday. A trip down to the holy city of Wolverhampton to see the legendary Trouble at the Civic Hall. Well, the Civic Hall bar actually. Curse all you trend pandering, false metal felating bastards that would let such an iconic band be forced to resort to changing down venue from the Wulfrun Hall to the bloody bar of the big venue next door. Grrr. Anyways, said venue wasn't all that small, actually, being sized halfway between, say, the ABC 1 and the ABC 2 in Glasgow. Not exactly packed out, either, but then again Doom metal never was big box office (apart from, well, you know who). You're into it for the love of the damn thing.

None of that matters anyway. The band themselves were simply magnificent. Tighter than a constipated gadfly, heavier than four dozen buffalo stampeding on your cranium, louder than the coming apocalypse, yada yada yada. Have I really been waiting nearly twenty years to see them live? Brrrrrr. They ran the full gamut of their material, all the way back to the oldest, slowest, most funereal stuff right through the Jimi / Zep styled era of the mid nineties and then on to some new material which sounded super heavy in the old fashion - not that anyone will be buying it, sadly. I had heard that they will be on the same bill as Heaven and Hell on at least one festival line-up in Europe this summer. Probably in a land where the mullet is the official national tonsorial style - just a shame I can't afford the requisite hair weave.

Have to say that I really like Wolves the town. The lovely folk from the Midlands are generally pretty damn cool IME and you always get a nice bit of conversation with them, especially when they find they are talking to a Scot. Funnily enough, the town centre, to me, actually looks a lot like, erm, Hamilton... without the omnipresent shell suited, semi-human garbage polluting the shared psychic head space, obviously. Lots of great buildings with some beautiful architecture, especially the art gallery and St Peters church. Just, y'know, old-fashioned nice. I like old-fashioned nice. Defo worth a visit, I'd say.

Postcard from Big Smoke

I was in London for a couple of days this week and rather splendid it was too. Not going to go the whole Judith Chalmers hog, paint myself orange and give you some sordid blow by blow account of all sights seen but I will share just a few of my own little, erm, idiosyncratic observations...

1. Went to the Game On festival at the Science Museum, a celebration of computer gaming all the way through from the very old school Spacewar to the likes of the very nu-skool Gears of War with plenty of detours in between across the whole space time continuum. A beautiful concept, to my jaded eyes, not to be missed. Anyhoo, the big man is very much an old school chappy and was a tad more excited about seeing a PDP-1(!) in the flesh than in any of this hi-def polygon shifting bilge they are shoving down the collective throats of the gaming public at the minute, so... I spent my time playing Missile Command, Galaxians, Galaga and Moon Cresta! And bloody Xevious! Yes, all original old arcade machines with the coin mechanism re-jigged to give free infinite credits. Glorious, just what the doctor ordered (okay, they had R-Type there in PlayStation form with that blasted, unnatural three-button compromise thingy for a control set - fucking philistines! - so it was a bit less than perfect but still...).

The also had a listening post with a jukebox of old music from the 8 and 16 bit days including plenty from the main man, Lord Tim of Follin. Almost brought a tear to the big man's eye hearing that LED Storm title theme burbling away again - BTW, the YM plug-in writer for WinAmp really deserves our eternal thanks. Anyways, before I hit the road I got a wee look at the three next gen consoles which were set-up on display with folks showing them off. Brave new world, eh ? Meh. The offerings from Sony and the beast of Redmond both showed off some very pretty hi-def gfx on the various big telly's but they certainly didn't blow my socks off in any shape or form - the games still looked to me like the same old tedious pains in the tits the way 99% of the rot from the post SNES / MegaDrive era are. Besides all that, Bill G's boys ain't getting one thin dime from me (evil fucks that they are) whilst the Sony DRM house can bite my shiny metal butt if they think I'm subsidizing any more of that nonsense. The Wii looked the best bet and I was slightly moved by it - at least the big N aren't trying secure their "platform" as some kind of "media hub" and all that marketroid bilge - it is a pure games machine. Always been a little bit of a Nintendo fanboi but ultimately even the Wii didn't really do it for me either - certainly not with the UK price being the usual rip-off Britain guff. Ho-hum. The moths living in the old wallet are safe for yet another year.

2. Caught the new-ish play Frost/Nixon at the Gielgud theatre later on in the evening, with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella as the two protagonists. That man Sheen is one helluva good actor, way more than just a mimic - to my eyes he captured Frosty as a man above and beyond any hoary old "Hello, good evening and welcome" Bremnerism schtick. He maybe even upped his game beyond those (double) Blair and Kenneth Williams efforts on the goggle box. Good work, fella. Langella was also pretty damn top drawer as Nixon - real gravitas. Yes, a good show all told. Oh, and Salman Rushdie was in the audience, a few seats away from me in the Dress Circle. Really. No, really. No bodyguards or anything. Might have been a doppelganger but I am 99% sure that it wasn't. Got as much right as anyone else to be there, of course, but still a bit odd to see him out among the living. I did briefly estimate potential suicide bomb blast radius but assessed that I was safe and watched the play in a peaceful frame of mind...

3. Regent's Park really rules. Very quiet during the week and beautifully maintained. There must be something in this global warming malarkey because London was again really sunny and mild - even Uncle Mex felt obliged to give his chrome dome an airing in deference to the pleasant weather. I have always liked London, I still really do. Don't know if I'd live there, tho'.

Made with the help of - mash-up of selections from recent Plan B issues. Lovely. Especially Dosh. Super dear, super.