Aside from being weaksauce at keeping this blog updated in any way other than being the latest version of the software….I’ve been busy. Going to gigs mostly, although not really that often when I think about it.

Last night was Alkaline Trio, who I saw at the Slam Dunk Festival and at The Roundhouse earlier in the year. Slam Dunk was fab and I was only really there for the Trio and got bonus Against Me! AND caught Your Demise, whose guitarist I went to primary school with*.

The sound at the Garage was WAY better than at the Roundhouse – I think the acoustics there just didn’t work for it. Generally they were amazing, especially since they’d just hopped off the plan from the US in the morning.

Can’t remember the setlist, I never do, but they played Sadie, Radio…and looking on last.fm has found it for me.

I less than three Dine, Dine My Darling big time – mostly for it’s morbid sentimentality I suppose, and it was epic. Radio and This Could Be Love got the usual massive singalong. All round it was fab.

The support were rockin’ too. Loved The Exposed who were on first – definitely going to check out more of their music and probably actually buy the album I didn’t want to spend my emergency just-in-case tenner on last night.

Off With Their Heads were ok too – jetlagged but funny. Just wasn’t feeling their music as much as The Exposed’s though.

*It’s weird, that. Really weird.

Renegades last night were AMAZIN’. They’re a sort of Feeder side-project and a tiny bit ramshackle, what with playing new songs and getting it wrong occasionally. Only makes them move lovable I say.

I rocked out so hard, I hurt today. Or maybe I’m just getting old!

The support, the Cherry Break Wells were wicked too, should try and find out if they have any CDs out.

The marriage of Henry VIII and Katherine Parr has been re-enacted daily there and I have to say that the guy wandering about as Henry VIII was WICKED. He was hilarious and really interact well with the general public. Didn’t see much of Katherine Parr as I was too busy wandering about doing audio tours to be in the right place at the right time to catch the rest of the festivities.

In the evening, I attended the discussion on “Henry VIII on Stage and Screen” (chaired by Dan Snow and featuring Thomas S Freeman, Gregory Thompson, Greg Walker and Susan Doran), which was way interesting and like the giant geek that I am, I remembered to bring a notebook to make notes. Although it’s not just because I’m a geek, it’s because I tend to forget earlier points when I get caught up in the later ones

Henry VIII is one of those kings that children remember because he got married 6 times and he had an extreme fondness for execution. Which is great. The multiple marriages thing kind of makes him more accessible, in the same way that Elizabeth Taylor is accessible. Or maybe not. At least the whole set up of his family – different children from different mothers and wives who became essentially sisters and all the wacky hijinks that went on back then are kind of a familiar story.
The whole hard-on for execution and Henry’s famed temper are also one of those things that show up a heck of a lot on telly and in film – I guess because it makes for interesting viewing (and maybe more so for the current generation who are all obviously apparently hopped up on violent computer games and similarly violent music! Or something )
Interestingly, something that was pointed out and something that I’ve not really thought about was that Henry’s attitude towards his wives and daughters changes depending on the time the play/film was written and tends to be more in line with the thinking contemporary to that of the play or film.

I can’t help but wonder that there is a heck of a lot missing from the picture of Henry VIII that most people (myself included even after attending this talk!) have of him. Not much is said about his life other than for his marriages, his children, his rage and his gluttony, at least in a form that is accessible to the masses. I guess The Tudors is helping to “adjust” the idea that Henry was this big fat angry bloke and that in his youth at least he was apparently hot and charismatic, though some of that has to be the allure of power perhaps. I’ll probably do more reading about him (to add to the HUGE stack of WW1 and WW2 books I’m ploughing through).

So, to summarise – Hampton Court Palace was wicked and the discussion I went to was well cool. As it were.

And I even remembered to check out an essay about Henry VIII that was mentioned during the evening! Mostly because I wrote that one down, but it does bring up some interesting points.

And then…. I got home and realised I was wearing my “I put the cute in execute” t-shirt. Muahahahaha.

Setting aside the garish orange colour that you feature so heavily, but cannot get rid of as it is your brand colour, I cannot help but feel disappointed by you.

Mainly for your HORRIFIC SECURITY BLUNDER in needing to press TWO links/buttons in order to log out. Most websites have just the one. It’s safer that way. You log out once and that’s it. Out. Secure.

YOU however need first to have a link clicked on that leads to a page that seems to look like you are logged out, BUT NO. You then need to click on another button to ACTUALLY LOG OUT. You shouldn’t care if your customer is SURE they want to log out. Just log them out. If they logged out by mistake then they can DAMN WELL log back in again, rather than thinking they logged out and then having someone STEAL ALL THEIR BANKING DETAILS they’ve not actually logged out.

And then this leads to my second item. It’s almost impossible to find some place on your website that gives an email address contact for someone who does not have an account with you. I don’t want to ACTUALLY write a letter on paper. I want to email. LAME.

Regards,

Rachel

End of the night.

Kasabian were WICKED. But first…the support.

Dark Horses were lamecore. Sounded a bit like a cross between a substandard PJ Harvey and Kasabian themselves, which may be ok if I’m sitting at home listening to a CD or something.

Live on the other hand, the singer is aloof and distant – never engaging at all with the audience. Maybe they’re just too arty in a bad way.

The Hours were great. The singer is a bit awkward – but when it looks like he forgets he’s on stage singing in front of a few hundred people that all disappears. And at least he talked to us! The songs were cool and I’m definitely gonna listen to more of their stuff.

Kasabian, of course, ruled. I’ve bought exactly one mp3 of theirs and that’s it – so I didn’t think I’d really be familiar with much of their music….but it turns out that yeah, I’ve heard them on the radio a heck of a lot and bizarrely they’ve been around a lot longer than I thought.

Of course, I feel like I’m still in 2004 and can’t quite wrap my head around it being 2010 next year i.e. officially The Future.

The set was great and LSF is a FAB song to finish on – the crowd were singing it still all the way through the rain to the train station!

Awesome awesome gig.

SO.

Yesterday, I was listening to xfm. Dave Berry tries to badger his producer into staying home to watch the football instead of going to see Maximo Park at Brixton Academy and so, on the spur of the moment, I text the show volunteering to take his ticket if he changes his mind.

10 minutes later, Dave Berry calls me and asks if I want to go see Maximo Park. Blatantly I do and thusly I am the recipient of two tickets for last night’s gig.

Which, incidentally, I had been trying to buy last minute tickets to the day before and failing dismally.

Maximo Park were AWESOME. More than awesome in fact. They were both AWESOME and WICKED.

I could do with going somewhere interesting right now.

However, I will have to console myself with studying Wales instead.

On Sunday I went to see “The Life of David Lloyd George“. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from what is basically a silent documentary – or how that whole idea works. It was *amazing*. The music was awe-inspiring – the guy playing was the composer and this film is 3 hours long so he was playing non-stop (well, apart from the interval!) the whole time. The music was a great accompaniment to the film and the film is structured very well – you get a wonderful introduction to how Lloyd George grew up and got to be a MP first of all and then the second part of the film focusses more on his action through the First World War. If you get a chance to see this, I heartily recommend it.

Dan Snow gave a sort of introduction to the film. I say “sort of” because he got stuck in traffic and arrived late to the screening so the introduction got moved to the interval. As a however-many-great grandson of Lloyd George he has quite a different perspective on the man – more of the stories he got told about him from his grandma rather than the war leader, I guess. He was right though about there only being room in the British conciousness for one great war leader at a time – and for us now, it’s Churchill who has eclipsed Lloyd George and all those who came before. I’m kind of glad though that there hasn’t been a war that has affected me that personally on such a scale as the world wars effected those who lived when Churchill and Lloyd George were in power.

Two days ago, I received a text message from my father. It was a forwarded message that he had received from his friend Mads, a Norwegian doctor currently in Gaza. The message made a very strong impression on me, and after pondering on it a few days I feel I have to share it with as many people as possible. The text message is obviously in Norwegian, but I’ve translated it for you.

“They bombed the central vegetable market in Gaza city two hours ago. 80 injured. 20 killed, everything is coming to Shifa. Hades! We are up to our knees in death. Blood and amputated parts. A lot of children. A pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything this horrible in my life. We are now hearing tanks. Spread the message, forward the message, shout it out. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We’re living on the pages of history right now.
Mads G. 3.1.09 13:50 Gaza, Palestine”

He has also been interviewed by CBS, this turned up in my RSS reader today:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/its-hell-in-here-they-are-bombing-15.html

Another interview with Mads:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=80685§ionid=3510302

I hope you understand why I can not sit here with these messages from my father’s friend and not show everyone. I’m safe and comfortable in my own home, and it’s so easy to close your eyes and ears to what is going on out there. Don’t close your eyes. Read. Watch. Listen. And most importantly – talk about what’s happening. Don’t let it be ignored.