Right, so I’ve been talking about writing this post for what, two weeks now? Three?  Dave bas posted his memory of the events of that night on his blog, and I urge you to read it as he is a far more eloquent writer than I.  It all started on a business trip to Dulles in May of 2002 (I cheated and checked here). We were due to fly home on the Friday morning after a fairly intensive week of doing something or other that I have long since forgotten.  It was around the time when work wasn’t as enjoyable for me as it used to be, as I had been forcibly moved to a different department from the one I had started in. This new department was one with a different culture from the one I had come from.  Different culture, and a very different atmosphere.  Not the fun one that I came to love.  Anyway, we (Dave, John and I) were in Dulles, and along with working hard, we were playing hard too.More...

So, another day, another German class out of the way.  Unfortunately I have an hour to kill in town before my physiotherapy so I figured I'd hang out in Starbucks for a bit.  I deliberately chose to hang out in town so that I could use the wireless in Starbucks and post a new entry here, but I have to admit that now that I'm sitting here I simply have nothing that I want to write about.  Fucking typical. 
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but we saw a singer called Lenka recently.  She's a Australian who has lived in California for a few years, so her accent is... interesting.  Her singing voice is brilliant though, and you should definitely pick up her self titled debut album.  Before going solo she performed with Decoder Ring.  We went to see her in concert a few weeks ago and she was brilliant.  There were about four fans in the audience, and the rest seems to have been a bunch of jaded music industry insiders.  Reception at the start of the event was kind of bland, with not much enthusiasm from what was obviously a pretty weary crowd.  Lenka brought them to life however, and really livened up what could have been a dead audience.  By the end of the concert, the four fans (of which Anna and I were two) weren't the only ones cheering.

I wrote that first paragraph about three weeks ago, fully intending to finish it off and publish the post.  It seems I’ve been a little lax.  Some of you have made up for it however, and some of you seem to have stopped blogging altogether.  What’s that about, dude?  Anyway, since then, a bunch of interesting things have happened.  We were in Berlin last weekend for the U2 concert, which was every bit as good as I expected it to be.  I think Anna has some photos of me screaming like a little girl when. I have a couple too, and some videos, but they were recorded on my mobile and really don’t do the experience justice. This is a concert and stage that has to be seen to be believed.  It was truly Magnificent. The set list was awesome, and comprised of Breathe, No Line on the Horizon, a much better than expected Get on your Boots, Magnificent, Beautiful Day (awesome… Dave B, was it you who said this song just made you smile every time you heard it?), Mysterious Ways and I Still Haven’t Found what I’m Looking For in which the seventy thousand strong audience possibly out sang the band. Angel of Harlem was next, which was assisted by three musicians dragged from the audience who apparently had a flag saying they were a band from the Czech Republic.  Bono asked our forbearance while they tried something new… and promptly had the three guys play Angel of Harlem, assisted by U2!. Pure magic! Then came Stay, Unknown Caller and the ever wonderful and even better live Unforgettable Fire. Next was City of Blinding Lights and Vertigo (which I had never seen before live), and a different version of I’ll go Crazy than the one on the album.  It was… interesting, and reception was perhaps a bit more muted for it than some of the other tracks.  Then Larry started up the intro drum sequence for Sunday Bloody Sunday and seventy thousand fans just went apeshit.  I have to include myself in that too.  There may have been a couple of tears brushed out of my eyes during that one.  An awesome rendition of Pride was up next, at which point I started to lose my voice. Then MLK and Walk On, and then Desmond Tutu was shown on the screen saying that everyone should be nice to each other, with some background music that faded into the intro for Where The Streets Have No Name.  I almost lost it at this point I have to say, it was a moment of sheer awesomeness that is going to be hard to beat. Once that had ended, and the crowd finally calmed down, we were brought back up again with One which Bono described as having been written in Berlin years ago. You can imagine the reaction to that.  Then came Ultraviolet, which was awesome too, and With or Without You which was so much better than I was expecting.  Bono’s voice cracked (deliberately I think) slightly on the higher registers, giving the song a kind of magic it doesn’t have on the studio version.  Finally Moment of Surrender and that was it for one hell of a memorable night. Luckily enough we were staying in Anna’s uncle’s apartment which is in Charlottenburg and very close to the stadium.  We were home in twenty minutes.

We also visited the Reichstag in Berlin, the Berlin Wall Museum and the obligatory ancient stuff for Archaeology geeks.  The ancient stuff was better than I was expecting actually.  It was in the Pergamon museum where they have the Pergamon Altar, Ishtar Gate and the Gate of Miletus all housed in lifelike surroundings.  We picked up some excellent audio guides for this tour, and again I have pictures but they don’t do it justice.

Okay so I'm back, and I've got coffee. I’ve no real excuse for not posting except for being really busy.  That and the inevitable blog-apathy that comes in early every year.  If you could graph the frequency with which I posted I’m sure you’d come up with the winter being the least populous.  Right, so after typing that last sentence, I did just that.  I was wrong.  My least frequent posting is done during the summer. Here is the average number of posts I’ve made every month for the last nine and a bit years.

Naturally enough, I also drew a pretty graph about it. So what can we tell from all this?  Well, I’m not the most prodigious of posters, that’s for sure.  That’d be about it really.  I do find it strange that the most frequent time of year for posting is actually in the Autumn, but that’s just me.  Anyway, the reason I was able to get all this data into Excel really easily is that I’ve been working a little on a new design for here.  I know I’ve been talking about this for months, I do have a good excuse for not rolling it out sooner.  I’ve just been really busy with other things, and not in a position to do significant typing with my finger. So, even though I’m still in this cast, here’s a rundown on everything that’s going on at the moment. 

I finished watching Buffy last night.  The ending was good but lacked something I think.  Then again, I was used to having each of the series end with a cliff-hanger, and this one nicely tied up all the loose ends.  It left something for the future, but I guess that never panned out.  Overall it was a brilliant series.  There were high points, such as “Once More With Feeling”, “The Body” and of course “Hush”, and… well not much in the way of low points.  “Once More With Feeling”, was an episode that was filmed as a musical and was so good that I can’t get the music out of my head. Its very Sondheimey, and brilliantly written.  I also have the entire six series of Angel to watch, though I’m a bit tired now, so maybe that can wait for a few weeks. Awesome series though, I have no idea why I didn’t watch it years ago.  If you don’t already know, the guy who created the show is called Joss Whedon. He the one who created both Buffy and Angel, and also Firefly with its spin-off movie Serenity. He also created the excellent series Dollhouse, which is airing right now.  I had been a fan of his long before I knew who he was.

German classes are of course ongoing, though a little slowly at the moment.  There were so few applicants for my course (ie: two) that they decided to change the times around to once a week instead of two.  On top of that, our teacher has been out for the last week, so apart from some homework (which I got mostly wrong!) there’s fuck all happening there.  I thought I had a complete handle on the meaning of the words in the homework – obwohl, falls, wenn, dass, weil, um, damit etc.  English translations would be although, if, that…, at…, with etc, and it turns out I didn’t know them as well as I thought I did.  I actually though I had nailed the meanings of these words about a year ago and had no problem with them. Until now.  Oh well, there’s a major re-learning session coming up I think.

I’m going to be potentially doing some interesting work for James soon, if a couple of quotes that we have sent out are accepted.  More on that as it happens, but there’s a chance to get better at some things I’ve been familiar with but never used extensively in the past.  Oh, and in the next post I’ll tell you about my new mobile.  I’ll start that in a while, just have to go do some things first.

Mac vs. PC by Nick Greenlee from ARTimation 9 on Vimeo.

Dave recently posted that he was shocked at me going to see Coldplay in concert.  I’ve left that hanging for a few days while stewing over the correct response.  The truth is actually very simple, and really shouldn’t need to be said.  I went to see them in concert because I like their music.  There.  Happy now?  It is of course a bit more complicated than that, but the core of it is that I enjoy their music and wanted to see them play live.  I haven’t been to a large concert in a long time, and to be honest I know I’ve missed out on some incredible moments.  I had also never been to the Olympiahalle in Munich and wanted to see it.

I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan as you know, and have been for a very very long time.  It goes back to Niamh I think, an old friend from Dublin who turned me on to them first.  I think at the time I was pretty into Jean-Michael Jarre, which gives you an understanding of the root of my tastes.  I’ve always been more into rock than pop, though that’s a generalisation as opposed to a rule.  I have seen Michael Jackson in concert and it ranks up there as one of the best concerts I have ever seen. Likewise U2, who blew my mind with their Zoo Tour.  Music is a selfish thing: It touches you in ways that it can’t and won’t ever touch other people.  Coldplay’s music pushes the same buttons in me that the Floyd and U2 push, and that shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to see.  They’re simply a great rock band who have released some brilliant music.  How could I not go to see them in concert?

Chris Martin seems to be a polarising character in the world of music.  I have to say that I really don’t have an opinion on him either way.  I don’t tend to pay that much attention to what bands do when they’re not performing (excepting Bono and St. Bob perhaps).  In concert he came across as someone who was humbled by the adoration of the crowd on the floor.  I don’t know how real or fake that was, though if I had to bet, I’d say that it was a slight enhancement of what may actually be a natural shyness.  How could you not find it appealing to have the frontman of a group be incredulous at your response to their performance.  Whatever it was, and whether he pulled it off or not, is something that only someone who has been to many of his concerts can say.  Nicely enough, the entire concert was taped for Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin) and can be view online here. To quote him after the show, “I think the concert was the least shit Coldplay concert at the moment that you could have possibly ever seen.  Do you see what I mean?”.

I’ve missed the concert scene for so long that this getting tickets for them was a “now or never” kind of thing.  I’m glad I did too, as otherwise I would have missed out on a great gig.  When I last saw U2, they screwed up my concert-going experience for the rest of my life.  They played “Running to Stand Still” and ran it into “Where The Streets Have No Name” and it was perhaps the best thing I have ever heard live.  Actually there’s no perhaps… it was the best thing I have ever seen live.  While Coldplay didn’t come close to that, in part because I had a fucker of a cold and in part because their show was a little smaller, they were pretty close.  If I was feeling better I would have left my seat and moved towards the front, but I wasn’t.  I would have preferred to be right in the middle of the crowd, as opposed to sitting beside someone who really didn’t seem to want to be there. I just wasn’t feeling up to it though.

So ultimately it comes down to this: Why Coldplay?  Well, why the fuck not?

The lights go out and I can’t be saved at dave bushe dot net

Spotted earlier from on the B3TA board, this is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Awesome

Whoa, at 3pm this afternoon there was a long queue of complete lewsers queuing on the streets of Göteborg to buy an iphone.  I have the pictures to prove it too, and will upload them when I get back to Munich in a couple of weeks. 

Whoa-oa-oa! I feel good, I knew that I would, now at dave bushe dot net

In nine years of blogging, I seem to have only mentioned The Pink Floyd about four times. I have no idea why this is, as they have been one of my (if not the) favourite bands for far longer than the lifetime of DaveWhite.Net.  I never got to see them play, to my great distress. In fact, I had the opportunity to see them on two occasions, but circumstances played against me. 

The first time was for the Division Bell tour in 1994.  There was a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention on in London that we (as cast members of the Irish Rocky) were supposed to go to.  I had quit my job about two weeks before that so I didn't go because I thought it would be a waste of money.  Little did I know that Pink Floyd played their famous Earl's Court gigs that weekend and that there were tickets for us to go to see them.  Those concerts were later immortalised on the P•U•L•S•E album. I found out about it on the Monday when someone came back and told me that the concerts were the best thing they had ever seen.  Typical.  The second time was for the Live 8 gig.  The problem with that one was that Anna came home from a trip to the US early, sick, and in need of care.  That trumps a concert in my eyes.

I have seen David Gilmour play in concert at the Royal Albert Hall for his On An Island tour, and that was awesome.  The particular night we were there was the one where David Bowie sang Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb, and ranks up there with the best concerts I have ever seen.  I do have the DVDs, but I haven't ever looked at them to see if we can be seen, being usually too concerned with what was happening on the stage.  I think we (Trev, Dennis, Seamus, Duncan, me) should be pretty visible, as we were in a box centred on the left wall.  I must check that out sometime.

I have all of Pink Floyd's albums, and have downloaded some bootlegs and variations I haven't found in physical format.  Most of the albums are in CD format, but I think there's actually a couple of vinyl albums back in Ireland, that I'll have to dig out at some point.  They are all of course digitised and on my MP3 player, and taking up a lot of room as I have them ripped at a high bit rate.  Again, at some point in the future I'm going to make lossless rips of them (and possibly my U2 collection, actually probably most of our CDs, but that's a project for a later time) and to hell with the size implications.  Disks are cheap now days, right? One that I don't have (yet) is the new boxed set Oh By The Way that they just released.  Each of the CDs on it are miniature versions of the original albums and presented inside sleeves that look like the album slip covers.  I also have a couple of their VHS videos - Live at Pompeii and a recorded-from-TV Earls Court concert.

I have also seen the Australian Pink Floyd many many times.  They are perhaps one of the best tribute bands in the world, and have been around for a long time now.  Stumbling across their updated web site yesterday prompted me to write this post, though I can't remember the impetus for looking at their site in the first place.  It might have been something somebody on Twitter mentioned, but it eludes me now. Anyway, your chances of seeing them in concert are far better than seeing the originals, and while nothing will ever match the real thing, they're pretty damn good.  We've also seen them in the Albert Hall, where they performed the 30th anniversary tour of Dark Side of the Moon, which was pretty special.  Oh, I remember now what made me think of them.  There was a track that I was looking for online which is their version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which had a sequence of sound before it (effects like the Skippy theme, Neighbours theme etc building into a slight crescendo and then fading rapidly to leave you with the familiar G minor opening sequence. It was in fact a rare moment that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up when I first heard it.  I couldn't find it online, although some of the effects are audible on some sequences of the embedded songs on their site.

I guess its pretty safe to assume that they are my favourite band.  As a general rule I listen to anything from metal to classical, but I have some staples in my taste.  Rock and Roll, a la Pink Floyd, U2 and Bruce Springsteen being my most listened to genre. Those are the bands that I used to go asleep to when I was younger, and the ones that I now have on my MP3 player and routinely play.

Riddick didn't say "Fuckin' disgusting", he actually said "Fuckin' insultin'".  Sometimes the quotes work better in my head than in yours.

"Fuckin' disgusting", to quote Riddick. Having had twenty four hours to digest it, those would be the two words I'd use to describe Iron Man.  This movie had so much potential and so much good about it, that it was disgusting what they did with the storyline. The blatant, offensive, irritating and just fucking disgusting racism in it was shocking to behold.  This is a movie that played ominous music whenever an Arab was shown on screen.  This is a movie where the "good guys" all work for or support the American military.  This is a movie where they showed the American flag and talked in terms of patriotism, winning the war in Iraq, and making better weapons to do so.  This is a movie where they lauded Stark's father, who helped create the atomic bomb.  Now, I have to add to all of this rant that this is how the comics were written originally.  At the time they would have been culturally relevant and not quite so politically incorrect.  Today however, it wouldn't work, and shouldn't have been made as it was.

The reason its such a pity is that taking out the blatant racism and American patriotism (difficult without changing the whole tenet of the story), Iron Man was indeed glorious.  The interplay between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow was fantastic.  There were moments of pure frisson between the two of them that were just awesome to behold.  The suit was an incredible piece of special effects, being both completely believable and impossible at the same time.  Now, I'm not a great fan of the Iron Man comics, having read my last one about twenty five years ago, but from what I remember it all seems to have been fairly accurate.  If there hadn't been so much racism in it, then I would really have loved this movie.

As is it, I really cannot wait for the next one, so long as they lay off the blatant racism and silly patriotism.  I just can't tell you how much that spoiled it for me.