Well it's been a year since my last post, and another bit. So I thought I would celebrate by posting another post.
It's been a sort of extended Lent, without any religious conviction, starting pancakes, finishing chocolate, or indeed anything worthwhile to give up. Giving something up in hindsight, because you couldn't be bothered to do it, is probably the most worthless point of this whole idea.
I couldn't believe Ulrich Schnauss was on at the Norwich Arts Centre, artists I like never seem to come to the UK let alone my home town. He wrote one of my favourite ever albums A Strangely Isolated Place and so I was super-excited to be going to see him in such an intimate venue.
The night was a bit more noise based than I would have hoped. Local support act Sennen were fairly intense shoe gazing noise merchants, actually pretty good, and extremely loud. The next band from the US Airiel seemed very dull to me, so we sat outside from where they sounded like Oasis to me (oh dear).
Then we went back in to see Herr Schnauss, he was wandering about in the crowd, and as he walked past us, there was a grim eggy smell in the air. Groo! Then when he came back, so did the smell. So he was obviously relieving himself of toxic gas before his set!
He followed on the noise theme, by layering his compositions to the point of excess and self-indulgence. The beauty of his twinkly pristine tracks still shone through, but he is obviously entering an angry feedback period. Thankfully he played a couple of his pretty tunes for the encore, which was very relieving.
Following a nerdy discussion with a colleague, we were disappointed to find that googling "Ingredients of grog" or ""Ingredients of grog Monkey Island" didn't come up with the required list. So hopefully the following will aid someone who finds themselves in a similar situation...
The Ingredients of Grog:-
Kerosene Propylene Glycol Artificial Sweeteners Sulphuric Acid Rum Acetone Red Dye No 2 Scumm Axle Grease Battery Acid and/or pepperoni.
I was asked by Princess Sarah Wife to write about the most first song that kindled my love of music.
The first piece of music that really engaged me was the Dr Who theme tune by Ron Grainer. The show was essential viewing for a child of the seventies with Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop making a low budget sci-fi TV show into something truly enthralling. My anticipation of each episode was full of excitement and also fear, and the theme tune with it's surrealistic title sequence just enhanced the emotions, as my brother and I hid in the clichéd location behind the sofa . The tune has a raw simple electronic feel, as it opens with rhythmic heart pounding pulses. This gradually transmutes into a throbbing melody, before the wail of the main melody whips through the whole thing on another level completely. During the closing titles there was also an extra treat where a bridge brings in a new melody in an truly uplifting medieval style.
Is their any wonder that I grew up with a love for electronic and instrumental music? They can go and stuff their new orchestral version, it's lost all it's machine soul!
Went to see Die Hard 2.0 tonight, and everything got smashed up by Bruce Willis, and it turns out that nerds are cool after all.
There was much carnage, but not enough swearing, I didn't notice the "One use of strong language" that the BBFC promised me. Thankfully I did see Mr Willis take on the evil terrorist/thief/hackers, he unplugged their modems, trod on their glasses and dropped them down a lift shaft. Rah!
We went to Wells on Thursday, and the weather was fairly good, but the tide was right out so we couldn't reach the sea without an epic trek, so we made do with splashing about in pools in the sand. Sarah was excited when she found out her Crocs floated, so we had a Crocs race, and I lost. We popped in to see my folks and then we went and did something secret somewhere else.
The next day was our fifth wedding anniversary so we decided to go swimming at the Splash pool in Sheringham. I went on the flume a lot, and hit an insane 13.86 MPH - nose bleed! The wave machine was switched to "Tsunami" until the boss came back and they switched it to "Ripple" setting - boo!
Today we went to Briston Church Fete, it pissed down, so we squeezed into the overcrowded hall. Got to the cake stall early and bought a ginger cake - num! Then we went home.
We went to Cambridge yesterday, but we didn't leave till 2:30PM and we stopped at Little Chef, so we didn't get to the park and ride till after four, and we had minimum shopping time.
I bought a vinyl album in Fopp, and I thought it was the Barbarella soundtrack album, but when I got it home, I realised it was a repressing of a tacky sixties Pickwick Records cover album, with tunes from Barbarella and some other random tunes done in a lounge-core style. Apparently it is quite a cheese classic, despite my initial disappointment. (It's not even Jane Fonda on the cover!).
