A brief hiatus....hiatus...what a word....

................It is I!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, yes. I return, and even more excitingly, I return quite possibly gainfully employed. Hopefully. I'm doing a couple of hours at an after school club next week, which I'm getting paid for, and which will hopefully lead to summer job. Yeah! Working with children. I'm excited, I think. Kids are fun, and never cease to amaze me. Except the bad'uns. I'll whip them into shape though.

I caught up with a friend who I hadn't seen in forever yesterday, which was really nice. It's interesting how, when questioned, you're able to describe a year of your life in 30 seconds or so. It's kind of worrying that a whole year of life can be condensed like that. Rambling on for half an hour about yourself doesn't particularly make for good conversation though.

I finally get paid for my work in May next week. I have already spent it, which is unfortunate as it has to last me til the end of July. Whoops. Well I'm sure I'll be happy wearing my new make-up, listening to my new cds, watching my new dvds, but unable to leave the house because I can't afford petrol or anything. Materialistic, moi?

Got rid of my keys for John Street today. It only took a minute long phone call in the end, but I'd still put it off til the last day possible. Hopefully I'll get my deposit back in a week or so. I won't hold my breath though, I've already had enough dealings with estate agents to know that that would be foolish. It's nice to be finally done with the house, except that I'm still paying the internet bill until October. But whatever, it's not hanging over me like it was before every time I saw the keys!

Other than that it's all quiet on the Western front...I need a hobby.

Toodles.

Throw those curtains wide...

Elbow, Elbow, Elbow. Last night was the Royal Festival Hall gig. It was incredible, mind-blowing, life-affirming.... Here's the review I cobbled together today. It still needs a little work... not least on the length!

Elbow – Royal Festival Hall – Massive Attack’s Meltdown 16/06/08

Across the river tonight, Coldplay are making their live comeback with a free show at Brixton Academy. On this side of the Thames, Elbow are playing to a sell-out crowd at Royal Festival Hall. It’s one of the biggest bands in the world versus the band they ripped off.

Unlike Coldplay, who will always be guaranteed a place on countless coffee tables no matter who they rip off, Elbow have a bit more to prove. There’s the critics, who, bar latest album ‘Seldom Seen Kid’, have been less than complimentary over the last 15 years. There’s the fans, those who have been there from the beginning, and those who bought ‘Seldom Seen Kid’ on a ‘like-Coldplay-you’ll-love-this’ basis. There’s Massive Attack, this year’s Meltdown curators, who handpicked Elbow not just because they’re fellow Manchester comrades, but because they think they deserve it. Then there’s the band themselves. 2008 is looking decidedly like make or break for Elbow. They’ve moved record labels, had babies, and released their most critically acclaimed album to date. If it doesn’t come together this year, will it ever? When put like that, it’s a wonder the band make it on stage at all.

But of course they do, with frontman Guy Garvey looking dapper in a black shirt and black pork-pie hat for the occasion. Kicking off with a fairly unspectacular opener ‘Station Approach’, the evening kicks off, well, fairly unspectacularly. By about six songs in, it’s looking like Elbow are treating this as any other gig. Refusing to divulge any details about the show in recent interviews, it seems as if the audience has been teased by a rather prudish Elbow, who fail to deliver the goods. ‘Grounds for Divorce’ fills the huge auditorium, with guitar riffs sounding extra filthy, but it’s no different to the performance on their recent UK tour.

Just as it’s looking like Coldplay, with their matching uniforms and tribal drumming are pulling ahead, Elbow start playing the gig of their lives. It sounds as though a group of rather vocally talented men in the crowd are singing/chanting the chorus of ‘Any Day Now’, from Elbow’s debut, ‘Asleep In The Back’. Not quite though, as an entire male choir files on from stage left, and augment Elbow on every track for the rest of the evening. This is pulling it out of the bag. This is the show of their lives.

From here on in, the show is transformed, and not just by ‘Jeff’ the choir. ‘Starlings’ is given it’s live debut, with horn blasts coming from all band members, the soundman halfway back in the auditorium, and the two highest boxes on either side. It’s also a rare outing for ‘Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)’, because, in Garvey’s own words, ‘the band can’t do it by themselves’. A delicate, fragile song, ‘Presuming Ed’ could easily have been lost in a venue this size, or one infinitely smaller for that matter. However, with the subtle but strong presence of Jeff the choir, Garvey’s almost breaking vocals are lifted to new heights.

The cherry on Elbow’s cake is undoubtedly ‘Newborn’. Taken from their debut, ‘Asleep in the Back’, the album holds some truly magnificent tracks that the band have never topped. Beginning as an acoustic, gentle number, the audience (possibly those only familiar with recent work), use this as an opportunity to pop out for a drink, have a chat, and generally ignore the impending cacophony of a soundscape that’s coming their way. As the track hits the middle eight, keyboardist Craig Potter slips off stage, probably unnoticed by most. The band continue the lilting instrumental, as a small box at the back of the stage lights up. And it’s when ‘Newborn’ hits its huge, all-encompassing, sweeping crescendo that the audience start to take notice. The back of stage becomes illuminated, and we see Mr Potter plugging away at the organ, amidst it all. This is the show’s, and Elbow’s defining moment. Yes, they can write catchy riffs, politically charged songs, middle-of-the-road indie with the best of them. But can the best of them do this? Absolutely not. As the track concludes with its abrupt ending, there’s a stunned silence before the onslaught of the biggest applause of the night, and a spontaneous standing ovation from the entire room. ‘Is this rock?’ the person next to me asks? No sir, it certainly isn’t, and that’s perhaps why Elbow have never hit the mainstream – they’ve simply got too much depth for pigeon-holing.

Guy Garvey is also clearly blown away, and proceeds to completely miss the opening note on ‘Grace Under Pressure’, despite an introduction from the choir that manages to make the line ‘We still believe in love, so fuck you’ sound like a celestial chant. Second time lucky though, and the entire audience joins in with that should-be infamous line.

Finishing their triumphant set on current single and possibly the most uplifting song ever ‘One Day Like This’, all doubts are firmly quashed. Whether they make it this year or not, anyone in Royal Festival Hall will tell you that Elbow are truly a brilliant band, made up of talented, inventive, dedicated and determined musicians, who quite frankly deserve more than coffee table success anyway.

Hats off to them

Work tomorrow. Morning and afternoon exams.Really not looking forward to it, and the fact that I've only got 3 exams left doesn't seem to be making the slightest bit of difference. Ho hum.

David bloody Davis...

So David Davis resigns over the 42 days saga. Surely, if anyone was going to resign, it should've been those on the Labour party who voted against the government. But no, Mr Davis resigns because he wants to waste time and money by getting himself re-elected to draw attention to the issue. Er, excuse me Mr Davis, but I think we're all already bloody aware of the issue at hand here, and you faffing about trying to get votes in some Northern town no-one's ever heard of until yesterday isn't going to change that. I find the whole debacle a ridiculous waste of time, and it seems he's just drawing attention to himself rather than the issue at hand. Bugger all this banging on about the Magna Carte, why doesn't he stand up in Parliament and continue to fight on the issue instead of getting on the campaign trail? No wonder David Cameron looked a wee bit embarrassed. And let's face it, he's going to look like a bit of an idiot when the legislation doesn't get through Lords and the big vote looks fairly insignificant and unimportant.

I am pretty shocked the government won though. I don't understand how anyone could think this is a good idea. For starters, it's 2 weeks, which in the grand scheme of things probably won't make that much difference. I imagine if the government tried for any longer length of time they wouldn't have stood a chance though. But just think about it - the constant terror scares in this country mean that the public want to see people being investigated, plans being thwarted, the police constantly protecting us. So therefore at a whiff of something vaguely Al Qedia, rucksack, aeroplane, or even Muslim related, they pounce. So for all those innocent people arrested (which doubtless there are many), they can lose six weeks of their lives. Imagine you are held in custody for six weeks. What happens when you get out? Do you still have a job to go to after that time? Do you still even have a roof over your head, or have you missed a rent or mortgage payment? Do you have a huge stack of unpaid bills and final reminders and bailiffs at your door? It is ridiculous. Granted yes, it is only another 2 weeks to the current legislation, but who's to say it'll stop now? In American people can be detained for up to 6 months, even longer. Will the UK continually add 2 weeks until we get to 2 months, 3 months. I think really this sets a precedent that the government will be able to rely on to take this law further, which is very, very dangerous.

Granted terrorism is a serious threat, people do need to be caught and prevented from causing carnage. But if there's enough evidence for arrest then surely another months is more than enough to bring charges?

What a shambles.

Also, Chris Martin walking out halfway through an interview about his new album because the questions were too hard. I understand perhaps some artists not wanting to go too much indepth about their music, and leave it for the listeners to interpret without influence, but he clearly just couldn't be bothered to talk for fear of sounding like a fool and revealing that perhaps Viva La Vida, despite its high-brow cultural links, is in fact not particularly well thought out and that Martin still can't write a chorus. Perhaps. Annoyinly though, it's still a damn good album.

Plays, songsheets and and empty void of nothingness...

So, Thursday night, Duke Special. A little disappointing quite frankly. He spent far too much time messing about with pointless theatrical stuff, most of which I'd already seen (although that's obviously not his fault). Granted he was on stage for nearly 2 hours, but a lot of that was spent messing about. Being a solo show, he had no band with him, but instead decided to play along to a backing track. Since when did that become acceptable for a serious musician to do on stage? The highlight was when he got the entire room to sit down for Freewheel, which was a pretty beautiful moment. Apart from that though, it seems that he's a lot better with a band than without, particular Chip 'cheese grater and whisk' Bailey.

Yesterday I went to see a play, 'God of Carnage'. It was a little too farcical for my liking, and the acting was a bit 'drama school'. Perhaps not worth the £40 ticket. Still, it's something to do.

So as of next week I have nothing to do with my time, apart from wade and wade through piles of CDs that need reviewing, which I'm really starting to lose the passion for. I need something to get out of bed for.

'Pip.

Well the world's getting heavy and it sticks to my feet...

Another day, another pitiful display of the disillusioned younger generation throwing their life away, in the form of English Language. Foundation tier, of course. One boy decided he'd just draw graffiti about smoking dope. By all means smoke dope, but that's really no reason not to do your English exam. He got removed about 25 minutes in, and probably sloped off to get high. It would've been a lot more fun getting high if he'd actually done the exam though, wouldn't it? The rest seemed to manage to write about 3 sides of A4 in the two hours. Now unless they're all the most succinct, concise writers in the world, there's no way any of them are going to get near the 100 marks for the paper with that amount of writing. Still, I suppose the world needs plumbers and hairdressers too. I know that's a really flippant, classist, maybe even ignorant remark to make, but I think that there's probably a certain amount of truth in it.

Anyway, the shaky hands society will be in in 10 years or so aside, things are ticking along nicely. I did my first reviews for The Line Of Best Fit and they weren't too bad. It was hard, as I suspected it would be, to write three times as much as I normally do for an album, but with a bit if help from Wikipedia for some background info I managed to to churn out a healthy 400 words for each, so hopefully they'll go up sometime this week.

I have a date with the Duke (Special) on Thursday night, which should hopefully be a lovely occasion, and hopefully not similar to the show I saw at the end of last year. Review to follow I'm sure...

I'm still absolutely in love with Elbow, and cannot wait for their show at Royal Festival Hall. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some kind of orchestra augmentation. I asked them about it recently, for an interview for Tasty (which was an absolute pleasure, sadly it was only an e-mail interview thought) but they were keeping tight lipped on their plans, so hopefully they'll be pulling something spectacular out the bag.

Can't believe YSL and Bo Diddely have died. I mean I can, but still. I see the death of YSL as quite a timely reminder that a lot of the fashion greats- Prada, Gucci, Versace (although she'd never admit it) and now certainly in the later stages of life, so it's a sad though that a lot of them will be off to big fashion house in the sky soon. And as for Bo Diddely, well I'll make not attempt to summarise what he did for music, except to say that it's definitely a big loss. RIP.

That is all, apart from the fact that I really need to make some kind of employment plan, because I'll be out of a job in a couple of weeks when the exam's finished, so I could do with anther one in place really.

'Pip.