(no subject)
Well, it's been a month. I wasn't gonna do a catchup entry (to tell the truth I likely wasn't gonna do an entry at all - I've been feeling a bit antisocial recently, hence the lack of update & the lack of actual interaction on the talkers) but J sat & looked all wide-eyed & said he'd like to read an entry from me. So here we are ;)
It's been a good month for musics - we went to the Marillion Weekend at the beginning of Feb. J's written it up at length, so I think it's sufficient for me to say it was a very enjoyable weekend. I think my favourite of the support bands was A Day's Work, and I don't think I can say which of the Marillion sets was the best, they were all good :) The Britney Spears cover was the weirdest tho, even more so than h in drag for "Money, Money, Money".
The next gig was Blackfield supported by Pure Reason Revolution - both of whom were fantastic. The sound mix for PRR could've been better, but I didn't think it suffered too much for that. We met up with Jo & Chris, and Stu, and Pete & Amanda for that gig - staying over at Pete & Amanda's place afterwards.
The next gig was organised by Ed and was Dartz! at the Ice Bar - which is 10 minutes walk from our house & the gig was free. I quite liked Dartz!, but the support band weren't really my cup of tea despite being good at what they did (screamy-vocalled hardcore/thrash stuff). Still, it was a pleasant Monday night out.
And finally (till Sunday) we saw PRR again on Tuesday night at the tiniest venue I've been to (I think) - 140 capacity upstairs room in a pub in Cambridge. Quite a nice venue even so. The support were Wave 67, who were quite good (goodness knows how to describe it - guitary groovy stuff, not much if any vocals), and Forever Like Red, who were clearly influenced by Jeff Buckley & quite good at what they did, it just didn't do anything for me. PRR were great :) The sound mix was the best we've heard them with, and being in such a small place we got near enough the stage to see the band (they're all pretty short people).
And Sunday we're off to see PRR in London, and then that's it for gigs till mid-April I think. So far, anyway.
In other news - we've obviously been to Scotland again, this time for Grandma's funeral. It was quite truly weird as it was soon after Grandad's - my Uncle Eric was saying it was a bit like Groundhog Day, superficially the same, just the details different. We brought a few boxes of stuff home with us as there was too much to fit in Dad's car - I spent an afternoon a couple of weekends ago looking through them at all the photos. There's some older stuff that was interesting to see, and some pictures of me that reinforce my desire not to get my hair cut again. I plan to scan some of the older ones to go with our collection of pictures from J's Granda's family's photo album, and I'll probably do some representative ones of the more recent ones (like of Eric & Lesley's wedding). I've given up on the idea of scanning the lot - in the boxes we've got there're a few hundred photos & I think Dad has more in the boxes he's got in Oxford. A lot of them are ones that my parents sent my grandparents each Christmas, so while they were interesting to look at it they were all stuff I know about anyway.
Otherwise, I've mostly been doing a lot of the paperwork & organisation for our genealogy project, and playing a lot of Quake4. We did go to a local meeting about proposed extension of the local residents parking scheme - they may extend it past us & we wanted to find out about the scheme and how that'd affect us if it got extended: short answer is that we should say we wanted to be part of it, as then we would be able to buy permits for the streets we currently park on. Unfortunately finding this out took sitting through 2 hours of meeting while a very vocal and ill-mannered minority of local business owners did things like interrupt the presentation explaining the scheme by shouting "It's all a load of crap!", and then complain at the end that it was badly explained & presented (no shit, you wouldn't let him finish). We also got treated to people's ideas about how the council should've solved the problem in the first place, most of which revolved round the concept of "I'm fine with my cars, everyone else should be limited in cars or just go somewhere else". We went to The Dove afterwards for a couple of pints & a bitching session about how "people are dumb". Democracy in action, eh?
It's been a good month for musics - we went to the Marillion Weekend at the beginning of Feb. J's written it up at length, so I think it's sufficient for me to say it was a very enjoyable weekend. I think my favourite of the support bands was A Day's Work, and I don't think I can say which of the Marillion sets was the best, they were all good :) The Britney Spears cover was the weirdest tho, even more so than h in drag for "Money, Money, Money".
The next gig was Blackfield supported by Pure Reason Revolution - both of whom were fantastic. The sound mix for PRR could've been better, but I didn't think it suffered too much for that. We met up with Jo & Chris, and Stu, and Pete & Amanda for that gig - staying over at Pete & Amanda's place afterwards.
The next gig was organised by Ed and was Dartz! at the Ice Bar - which is 10 minutes walk from our house & the gig was free. I quite liked Dartz!, but the support band weren't really my cup of tea despite being good at what they did (screamy-vocalled hardcore/thrash stuff). Still, it was a pleasant Monday night out.
And finally (till Sunday) we saw PRR again on Tuesday night at the tiniest venue I've been to (I think) - 140 capacity upstairs room in a pub in Cambridge. Quite a nice venue even so. The support were Wave 67, who were quite good (goodness knows how to describe it - guitary groovy stuff, not much if any vocals), and Forever Like Red, who were clearly influenced by Jeff Buckley & quite good at what they did, it just didn't do anything for me. PRR were great :) The sound mix was the best we've heard them with, and being in such a small place we got near enough the stage to see the band (they're all pretty short people).
And Sunday we're off to see PRR in London, and then that's it for gigs till mid-April I think. So far, anyway.
In other news - we've obviously been to Scotland again, this time for Grandma's funeral. It was quite truly weird as it was soon after Grandad's - my Uncle Eric was saying it was a bit like Groundhog Day, superficially the same, just the details different. We brought a few boxes of stuff home with us as there was too much to fit in Dad's car - I spent an afternoon a couple of weekends ago looking through them at all the photos. There's some older stuff that was interesting to see, and some pictures of me that reinforce my desire not to get my hair cut again. I plan to scan some of the older ones to go with our collection of pictures from J's Granda's family's photo album, and I'll probably do some representative ones of the more recent ones (like of Eric & Lesley's wedding). I've given up on the idea of scanning the lot - in the boxes we've got there're a few hundred photos & I think Dad has more in the boxes he's got in Oxford. A lot of them are ones that my parents sent my grandparents each Christmas, so while they were interesting to look at it they were all stuff I know about anyway.
Otherwise, I've mostly been doing a lot of the paperwork & organisation for our genealogy project, and playing a lot of Quake4. We did go to a local meeting about proposed extension of the local residents parking scheme - they may extend it past us & we wanted to find out about the scheme and how that'd affect us if it got extended: short answer is that we should say we wanted to be part of it, as then we would be able to buy permits for the streets we currently park on. Unfortunately finding this out took sitting through 2 hours of meeting while a very vocal and ill-mannered minority of local business owners did things like interrupt the presentation explaining the scheme by shouting "It's all a load of crap!", and then complain at the end that it was badly explained & presented (no shit, you wouldn't let him finish). We also got treated to people's ideas about how the council should've solved the problem in the first place, most of which revolved round the concept of "I'm fine with my cars, everyone else should be limited in cars or just go somewhere else". We went to The Dove afterwards for a couple of pints & a bitching session about how "people are dumb". Democracy in action, eh?