Finally free
Man, there's so much to tell!
Firstly, today was the deadline for my Final Major Project, and the exhibit is on May 9th. I've been so ridiculously, unbelievably stressed about finishing it all in time, but I'm really pretty amazed at myself because after staying up all night last night to do eleven contextual studies, I spent this morning gluing and mounting various things, and managed to type up my 1500 word Critical Appraisal from scratch, in two hours. I don't mean to brag, but that's impressive. :)
Anyways, for anyone's who's interested, this was my final outcome for my project:
I really enjoyed making this. I don't think I realised how much I miss drawing until now. I'm hoping I'll find the time somewhere in the near future to begin a new journal, but I want to branch out more. My old journal was very predictable.. I want to try new media and see where it takes me. I've been getting back into photoshop lately, thanks to Verve - a message board I became a member at a while back, which was down for a while but was recently revived. If any photoshop fanatics decide to join.. kamikaze-tryst referred you! ;)
The other major newsbreak is that last Friday was the most fantastically fun day of my life so far, no lie. Every year, the Teenage Cancer Trust holds a series of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, to raise funds. It's open to the general public, but they invite small groups of current and ex teenage cancer patients to each show, and this year I was one of the chosen few. The Friday concert was headlined by the Fratellis, and when we arrived we found out that the supporting bands were Figure 5, whom I'd never heard of before, and the Raveonettes. I damn near passed out at that last little discovery.
I've already accounted the day in extreme detail over at Verve, so I'll paste it here under a cut:
so when we got to the royal albert hall in london, we went in through the stage door at the back and from there on we were treated like royalty. we were shown to a dressing room backstage which was our base room for the day, where we left all our bags and stuff. it had a code for the door and everything. :) we got given cool shiny green passes to wear around our necks, saying "VIT" (very important teenager).
after we were settled in and stuff we were shown to the backstage bar room where a load of instruments were set up, each manned by an instructor. for the music workshop we were to come up with our very own song in the style of the fratellis. my friend katie played bass, and my other friend ant played drums. i played acoustic guitar with the guitar instructor, anthony (also a friend of mine from previous TCT events), while a girl whose name i don't know and a guy called jack played electric guitar. then there were a couple of people on keyboards and a bunch of others who sat around a table together and wrote the lyrics to what was to become 'scary psycho nan'.
halfway through the workshop we were led into the next room, where we got a private show from a mix of old school and up-and-coming artists, like laura critchley, who will apparently be releasing a single here in june. there was also a girl from the latest x-factor who did KICK ASS covers of 'valerie' by the zutons/amy winehouse and 'put your records on' by corinne bailey rae. there were a few r&b artists and a couple of rappers, two that were massive over here in the 90s.. basically it was an awesome show.
after that, all the artists that performed came into the bar area and watched us practise our song some more. laura critchley even helped with the vocals when we came to recording it. apparently it should be available for download soon so when i find out the link i'll post it.
when the workshop was done we hung out in the dressing room for a bit before dinner, during which we were given THE most AWESOME giftbags i've ever received. there were CDs like NME and virgin radio live sessions in there, along with cosmetics by benefit, a really nice shower set, a book of fashion images (will so be scanning those in for my photoshop work!), and loadssss more cool stuff.
for dinner there was a choice of roast duck, some kind of fish, or portabello mushrooms with cous-cous, each served with a kind of potatoes i've never seen before.. it kind of looked like apple crumble on top.. and vegetables. then there was a salad bar and desserts like banoffee pie and fruit salad and meringue, oh god the food was ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL.
AND THEN IT WAS THE SHOW! the supporting bands turned out to be figure 5 and the raveonettes. figure 5 i'd never heard of before, but they had the most amazing drummer! i don't know if he'd been affected by a bone cancer or something himself but his arms had been amputated from the elbow down, so he had these armband things that strapped the drumsticks on, and i swear i've never heard such an intoxicating rhythm.
after figure 5, a kind of mini orchestra came on.. i don't know if you've seen that new ford advert with the musical instruments made of car parts, but they brought them on stage and they were played by the royal music academy or something like that. it was pretty cool! the raveonettes were as fantastic as ever.. i about died when i found out they were supporting, i love them! sune looked adorable in a black and white stripey tee and cardigan, and sharin wore this really cute sheer black smock dress with long bell sleeves.
and then of course it was our beloved fratellis, who put on such a fantastic show it was almost beyond comprehension. i noticed that mince barely stopped grinning throughout the whole set.. he always looks like he's having a whale of a time, drumming away, haha. :) everyone went MENTAL when they played 'flathead', and there were two, yes TWO! encores. the first one i didn't recognise, but roger daltry from the who came on and sang while the boys played. the second one was, of course, 'chelsea dagger', which sent the entire room completely daft with joy, dancing and screaming manically.
after the show we went back to our room backstage, where we were told to stay put for a few while someone went to see if it was okay if we went and met the fratellis, to which the answer came back as "duh" (yep, apparently jon's actual words, haha.) so we got shown to their dressing room. it was massive, with a lovely thick rug in the middle and lots of reeeally comfy brown leather couches, and there were these two stand things with seats in front of them, with xboxes or some kind of games console built into them, which had a car racing game on one and a football (soccer) one on the other. there was a cooler in the corner with cans and bottles of everything you could imagine, and a wall covered with a 'teenage cancer trust' pattern, which we later discovered was for taking photos in front of.
all three of them were loveeeely. we got hugs and autographs and photos and pretty lengthy conversations.
me, jon, anthony and katie.
anthony, me, barry and katie.
katie, mince, me and anthony.
after saying goodbye and thankyou and stuff, we set off to the youth hostel for the night, out the stage door, which was great because a bunch of fans were hanging out there waiting for the boys to come out, and we just strolled out like the cats that got the cream. :D
I think the only thing that could have made friday more perfect than it was, would have been a piggyback home from jon. :)
I got a lot of video footage of the day, and I'm working on a mini-doc for JimmyTeensTV.com, so I'll post the link to that when it's up, but it could be a while yet. I want to use the song we recorded as a backing track and I'm waiting for the email with the link to download it. In the meantime, here's a little medley of clips from the music workshop, of Anthony trying to teach me guitar. He's so patient. :)