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Reading 2008

My fourth entry in a row with '2008' on the end of the title!

Last Friday I went to Reading for the day, the sole reason being to see Rage Against the Machine. You have to walk through the campsite to get to the arena (even with a day ticket), and on the walk through I was impressed by the improvements they seem to have made, you could almost have believed it was Glastonbury for a while, and it was light years ahead of V. However, the toilets inside the arena were a joke (people using the same entrance to enter and leave, meaning huge crushes) and a bottle of water cost 2 quid, although they did have a couple of water points. I spent most of the day drinking Boostmaster (Relentless) and had no alcohol as I didn't want to have to leave the mosh pit during Rage.

Here's what I saw:

Blood Red Shoes (NME stage) - a kind of reverse White Stripes, with a bloke on the drums and a woman playing the guitar. Their Wikipedia entry says they hate being compared to the White Stripes, seeing as they aren't as good you'd think they'd be flattered. But they were OK.
Dizzee Rascal (Main stage) - thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. Not much, it turns out, we left after two songs.
The Briggs (Lock-Up stage) - I can't remember a single thing about them, other than they were on before Frank Turner.
Frank Turner (Lock-Up stage) - there was a surprisingly large crowd of Frank Turner fans there, there was even a mosh pit for one song! He was very good.
Serj Tankian (Main stage) - for some reason his vocal was turned right down in the mix, so could barely hear him from next to the mixing desk until he switched mics near the end. What we could hear was pretty good, including a song featuring 'Money Money Money' by Abba...
Stephen Lynch (Alternative stage) - we came to the Alternative stage to spend a couple of hours watching comedy, and started off seeing the last twenty minutes of this bloke, who was really funny - the highlight being a song where he suspects his girlfriend of being a Nazi!
Ian Moore (Alternative stage) - was quite funny in places.
Jarred Christmas (Alternative stage) - a really funny Kiwi who started off by slagging off the North :-)
Trevor Lock (Alternative stage) - was introduced by the MC (Rufus Hound) as one of Russell Brand's sidekicks on his 6 Music show. Trevor Lock managed to achieve the distinction of being even less funny than Russell Brand - he completely died on his arse.
The Fratellis (Main stage) - yawn. Started off near the front but left after a few songs as there was no atmosphere, watched the rest from the side.
Queens of the Stone Age (Main stage) - the plan was to get to the front for Queens and then stay there for Rage. This worked to some extent, although I can barely remember any of the first half of the set as I spent all the time trying to stay upright! No One Knows was great though.
Rage Against the Machine (Main stage) - the main event - and I'm happy to say they lived up to my expectations and more. They came onstage dressed as prisoners from Guantanamo Bay including hoods over their heads, and proceeded to play Bombtrack blind. They then changed into more normal clothes and played hit after hit - it was mad down the front, I was drenched with sweat, and eventually had to leave towards the end as I needed water. After downing water and Boostmaster and a bit of a rest I made my way back to the front for the encore, which was Freedom and Killing in the Name. Bloody brilliant, although my camera didn't survive and my watch has only just recovered :-)

V2008

I went to V a couple of weekends ago. Originally Anna was going to come as well, but after we found out she was pregnant (I assume everyone knows this by now!) she decided not to, as she only wanted to see Muse and spending the weekend sober would have been quite difficult! Luckily I found someone to sell the ticket to at face value.

My main reason for wanting to go was because I had a few friends going, and I wanted to enjoy the whole drinking around the campsite thing. I did drink a fair amount, and had a great time just sitting around the campsite talking rubbish, but the weekend was spoiled for me due to the large number of morons who seem to attend V festivals. I didn't pay 160 quid to have cameras pushed into my face while some muppet wants to take a picture of himself and his girlfriend while Muse were playing Knights of Cydonia, or to have piss thrown over me, or to listen to people talking through whole songs, or for people to just be completely ignorant of anyone else. I don't mind if people want to behave like morons, but they could at least have the decency to do it at the back, not near the front where people actually want to see the bands! I felt quite violent a lot of the time as I was just fed up of being surrounded by idiots, to the extent that I left at about 1am on Monday morning as I just wanted to get away from the place.

Anyway, this is a list of what went on that weekend:

Friday

Air Traffic (C4 stage) - apparently I saw them because I have a picture of them, but I can't remember the first thing about them.
Shed Seven (C4 stage) - quite fun, in an ironic kind of way...
Wrist Action (Xbox 360 stage) - Wrist Action played V! Well, it was only me and Adam (plus Rich as guest bassist), playing 'Black Hole Sun' by Soundgarden on Rock Band :-)
Maximo Park (V stage) - the sound was abysmal, we could only hear anything by standing next to the speaker stack at the back, so didn't really pay much attention to what was going on.
Roots Manuva (Virgin Union) - don't really remember much of this!
The Pogues (JJB) - they were OK, didn't really know anything by them (they didn't do Fairytale of New York, unsurprisingly!)
Muse (V stage) - I thought they were quite average by their standards. This is probably because they've been playing the same songs for a couple of years now, plus I seemed to be surrounded by morons. But it was still pretty good.

Saturday

The Stranglers (V stage) - brilliant, can't believe they were first on the bill.
Squeeze (V stage) - they were pretty good even though I didn't really know any of the songs apart from Cool For Cats.
The Delays (C4 stage) - saw the last few songs, they were OK.
Alphabeat (JJB) - don't really remember much of this, think they were OK!
Goldie Lookin' Chain (Virgin Union) - the tent was packed, and had to watch it from the outside. Can't believe the organisers had got this one so wrong. They were fun as usual, although they did a few new ones.
Lenny Kravitz (V stage) - pretty good, although his guitarist is a much better player than he is!
Travis (JJB) - yes, I was so drunk I suggested going to see Travis, what was worse is that this video proves I enjoyed it!
The Zutons (C4 stage) - saw the first few songs, they were OK.
The Verve (V stage) - very good, although nowhere near as good as at Glastonbury (maybe it's because I was expecting a good show). Did a few more new songs than at Glasto.

I had a good weekend overall, but some idiots left a bad taste in my mouth, and I don't think I'll ever bother going to another V festival.

Barcelona Bangers 2008

Last month we again took part in Barcelona Bangers. This year's route was different, taking us via Lyon, over the Alps to Nice and down along the coast to Barcelona. We had a slight crisis the week before, after discovering that our Volvo 360 wasn't starting. Investigations (courtesy of Anna's dad) discovered that the problem was down to a worn cam shaft which meant the fuel pump wasn't getting any petrol to the engine. So after much panicking and searching for another car we managed to get an M-reg Volvo 460 three days before we were due to leave. Despite the decoration being a rush-job, Anna and I (along with some of the local kids) managed to do a pretty decent job of decorating the car to look like a castle, to go with our theme of Knights of the Round Table. We actually finished the decorating in the car park of the hotel in Calais!

The first day involved a long drive to Lyon, with the challenge being to take pictures of things on a list given to us by the organisers. We decided that finding a Frenchman riding a bike with a string of onions around his neck was going to be fairly difficult, so concentrated on the rest. We stopped off in Troyes and Dijon on the way, attracting lots of puzzled looks thanks to our knight outfits. The woman in the tourist office in Dijon must have thought she was going mad when an Englishman in a knight costume came in and asked if there was a shop that sold Barbie dolls nearby! Unfortunately we only came third in the contest, mostly due to the fact that our pictures of a cow, a sheep and a fire engine had all come from the toy shop where the Barbie doll was!

The second day was a drive over the Alps to Nice, with the challenge to take as many pictures of churches as possible. Unfortunately our route was affected by the Tour de France having a stage in the Alps that day, meaning we had to take a bit of a detour, but this led to some brilliant windy roads which were practically empty. We were also doing very well with churches, with three of us ready to take a picture whenever we drove past one. In the end we ended up with 41 pictures, easily enough for us to win the prize of a trophy and 100 euros! We spent part of the winnings in a great pizza restaurant in Nice (pizza avec oeuf is brilliant!) and had an early night as we were all fairly exhausted due to the heat.

The third day was a nice leisurely drive down to Barcelona along the coast, which was pretty much motorways the whole way. There was no challenge this day so we just tried to get to Barcelona as quickly as possible so we could have a rest in the evening before going out. This turned out very well for us - we crossed the border at around 2pm, and it turned out later one of the other teams had crossed after us but set their smoke machine off as they went through, leading to them and several other teams being stopped by the police and given fines for any number of ridiculously petty things. They even tried to pin 'taking part in an illegal rally' on some teams even though we weren't racing.

That evening all the teams gathered in an Irish pub near the centre of town and voted for their best team. Unbelievably we came 3rd and won another trophy and 100 euros! None of us were expecting it as there were a lot of better teams, but we were pleased nonetheless. Second place went to a team who had done their car up like the Flintstones, and first place deservedly went to the team who had done a van up like the Mystery Machine, with the driver dressed like Scooby Doo - he must have been sweating buckets inside it!

The next morning in Barcelona was wasted trying to get rid of the car. We drove around where all the scrapyards had been the previous year, but most of them seemed to have disappeared. One turned us away because we had a rally sticker on the car, but another pointed us towards the 'head office'. This office turned out to be where they took in cars and gave money to the people bringing them in. Another team with us at the time got €150 for their car, but they wouldn't take our car because the log book wasn't in our name - as we'd only bought it a few days ago obviously the documentation was still at the DVLA. Assuming we'd have no better luck with any other scrapyard, we drove around the corner and left the car there with the keys in the ignition. We'd have preferred to do things legitimately but they left us no choice - besides, if the council pick up the car they'll get money from the scrap value for it so they won't be out of pocket.

We spent the day just wandering around Las Ramblas and the harbour front. I inadvertently insulted a family of Manchester United shirt wearers whilst one of their relatives was standing next to us so we made off quite quickly! Honestly though, why do the English wear football shirts abroad? If you're going to a game, fine, otherwise you just look like a moron!

We flew home the next day, unfortunately on 'easy'Jet which meant inevitably we were delayed by about an hour, but the flight itself wasn't too painful.

Here are some links to pictures from Rich and Hayley...

Glastonbury 2008

I have to admit, this year I didn't have the usual giddiness approaching Glastonbury - last year's weather and car park experience plus the lack of big names on the line-up meant I wasn't expecting much. However I'm glad to say that this year was a classic Glasto, helped by the weather and some great performances by the less well known bands, plus of course copious amounts of pear cider.

This is a list of all the things I saw this year:

Thursday

Mik Artistic (Cafe Avalon) - heard him ranting about Radio 1 as we walked past so stopped to listen to the rest of his set, some funny stuff.

Friday

Hobo Jones & the Junkyard Dogs (Avalon Stage) - a skiffle punk band, great start to the Friday, getting everyone to sing along to 'What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor?' was brilliant!
Attila the Stockbroker (Cabaret) - saw him last year and thought he was pretty bad, however this year he was excellent, some great songs about the kind of people who read the Daily Mail/Express.
Alabama 3 (Jazzworld) - only saw a few songs as it was raining, but they were good.
Frank Turner (Avalon Stage) - Anna's new favourite, but I wasn't that impressed by the CD. He was very good live though.
The Gossip (Pyramid) - my only trip to the Pyramid on the Friday, and was pleasantly surprised, Beth Ditto seemed to be enjoying herself and she put on a good show, although the security bloke she proposed to probably didn't see it that way!
Fun Lovin' Criminals (Jazzworld) - not as good as I remember from Reading 2001 but still good fun.
Franz Ferdinand (The Park) - the 'Very Special Guests' promised in the line-up. Only played about 9 songs but were very good, 3 or 4 new ones that seemed better than the stuff on the 2nd album. There were lots of Dizzee Rascal fans waiting around (he'd been due to start around that time), I (very politely for me) told one behind me to go away and come back later if she didn't like it.
Jimmy Cliff (Jazzworld) - only saw a few songs as I was knackered, didn't hear any of the big ones unfortunately.

Saturday

Shakin' Stevens (Pyramid) - was good fun, he seemed to be enjoying himself and the crowd were too.
Martha Wainwright (Pyramid) - surprisingly good, her brother didn't turn up much to Anna's disgust!
Seasick Steve (Pyramid) - one of the highlights of last year, and was equally as brilliant this year, possibly better. Who'd have thought it was possible to sound so good with a three stringed guitar?
Crowded House (Pyramid) - we sat up on the hill for this one and chilled out, the sun came out for Weather With You. Some good banter from Neil Finn with the security guards, and he got the whole crowd to do a Mexican wave from the top of the hill down to the stage.
The Courteeners (John Peel Stage) - far and away the worst band I saw all weekend. Half the crowd seemed to be ecstatic about them and singing every song, but they seemed exceedingly dull to me. If this is the latest tripe the NME is masturbating over, no wonder the music industry is in such a bad state.
The Raconteurs (Pyramid) - a welcome relief after the last band, some quality guitar playing.
Manu Chao (Pyramid) - what I saw was great, his music really made me want to dance but I didn't have the energy! So I wandered off...
Ian Cognito (Cabaret) - an extremely offensive comedian - pretty funny though!
The Imagined Village (Jazzworld) - only saw the last few songs but what I saw was excellent.
Buddy Guy (Jazzworld) - the best guitarist I have ever seen, he was really enjoying himself and playing in the style of various other guitarists. Wish I could have seen all of his set, but I had to get to the Pyramid.
Jay-Z (Pyramid) - the intro video followed by Jay-Z leading the crowd singing Wonderwall is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. This was the highlight of my weekend, Jay-Z showing that he understood what it meant to headline Glastonbury by putting on a great show. I certainly enjoyed this a lot more than Oasis in 2005. Maybe Noel should learn to keep his mouth shut.

Sunday

Leftfield Rally with Tony Benn (Leftfield) - had a lazier Sunday, what with not having much energy left, especially after hauling most of my stuff back to the car in the morning. Billy Bragg and Tony Benn gave great speeches, but between them was Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union. He ranted and raved about the BNP in a way that if you replaced 'BNP' with 'black' would be considered racist. I hate the BNP as much as anyone, but this bloke was verging on fascist. He then urged all the unions to get together and strike on the same day to bring the country to its knees. What a complete and utter tosser he is.
Neil Diamond (Pyramid) - another one that we saw from on the hill. He seemed to enjoy himself and he knows how to work a crowd, but it wasn't really my kind of thing and I didn't know any of the songs. Still entertaining though.
Eddy Grant (Jazzworld) - sat at the back of the field and heard a few songs, none of which I recognised unfortunately.
Masters of the Kazooniverse - saw them while walking to the Pyramid. They 'played' Seven Nation Army on the kazoo, then gave some kazoos out for free!
Leonard Cohen (Pyramid) - had never heard anything sung by him before, but was quite impressed - will definitely have to listen to some of his stuff. Hallelujah was amazing.
The Verve (Pyramid) - I hadn't expected much from them, after all they've not done anything of note for 10 years, but they were very good, probably my second favourite act of the weekend after Jay-Z. I thought it was a mistake not to finish with Bittersweet Symphony but the new song that they did finish with sounded very promising...

We left in the early hours of Sunday morning and were able to get straight out of the car parks, a welcome relief after last year!

There's some pictures on Facebook, I'll upload them to Picasa at some point as well.

Nice, Monaco, Erding (again), Band Session

Time for another catch-up! Since the last entry:

- Went to the annual Amadeus inter-departmental football tournament in Nice (well, in Biot really). Hopes were high after last year's 6th place, but this year was a new low, we somehow managed to get 31st place (out of 39), even managing to lose to the 2nd London team along the way (they came 30th). However, I managed to avoid injury which is always a good thing!
- The next day we went to Monaco for the F1. We had unreserved standing tickets for Secteur Rocher, even though we got there for 9am the area was still packed. We found ourselves a vantage point on a hill, and I spent the next seven hours with one foot higher than the other, causing me much more pain than the football did the day before! The race was really good, apart from Hamilton winning. The Hondas were really crap, both of them would backfire at exactly the same point on each lap!
- I went to Erding for the 3rd time this year at the start of June. Thankfully this was only for one day, but I had to give two presentations to the operations teams. When I first joined the company the first training need I had identified was to go on a presentations skills course. It's now almost five years later, do you think I ever received said training?! Thankfully the presentations didn't go too badly.
- Glastonbury - the next entry is going to be about this.
- Had a long overdue band session this weekend. We'd booked a rehearsal studio for it, but unfortunately it was sweltering in there and we had to stop every few minutes to get some fresh air, so it wasn't the best session. The visit to the Brush was great though, there were quite a few people who I used to go to school with in there.

Bad mood

I am in a spectacularly bad mood this morning after the football last night. My mood is worsened by the fact that now I have to hope Man Utd win the final as I couldn't stand it if Chelsea and all their post-Abramovich fans won it. I guess it's too much to hope for to have the whole stadium blow up during the game...

I'm also fed up of hearing how brave poor Lampard was for taking a penalty last night. Yes, we all know his mum died, but he earns 5 million quid a year for kicking a ball around (or not, if he's in an England shirt) - it doesn't take bravery to do your bloody job.

Other than being in a bad mood, not much else is new - I now have Wii Fit and have apparently lost 2lbs in the last 5 days. Still waiting for GTA4 to arrive though...

Erding, Glastonbury, Muse

At the start of April I had to go back to Erding for a three day workshop. It was my least hellish trip there, partly because it was a short trip but mostly because my most of my team also went, so the evenings weren't so lonely! Did a fair amount of 'team-building' in the pubs, and I also caught up with a few people from Miami who were also over.

The weekend after coming back from Germany was Glastonbury ticket day. Unsurprisingly seetickets once again completely cocked everything up, and we were left waiting for hours to find out whether or not we had tickets. Of course, with hindsight we didn't need to panic so much (as they're still on sale now), but this makes me wonder why seetickets still couldn't cope even though there was less demand!

We went to see Muse on Saturday, who were playing the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Teenage Cancer Trust gigs. The venue itself is pretty good, the sound quality is excellent and even from the back seats we had a good view. The support were the Futureheads, who were just incredibly average, even the awful Hounds of Love cover didn't get the crowd interested. Muse however were fantastic, it was the best I've seen them since Glasto 2004. The best bit was the first song of the encore, Megalomania, where Matt Bellamy played the Albert Hall's organ.

I've just got Mario Kart for the Wii, so have been playing with a small plastic wheel which is a lot more fun than it looks!

Sam Smith's Challenge - completed!

On 8th March we finally got around to drinking in the remaining 3 pubs in central London, and in doing so completing the Sam Smith's Challenge! We've now had a drink in all 32 Sam Smith's pubs in the central London area, and are considering our next challenge - anyone know how many Wetherspoons there are in central London?

To celebrate that evening we went to see some comedy at Soho-Ho. I had heard Henning Wehn and Ian Stone on Fighting Talk so was looking forward to it, and wasn't disappointed, Henning Wehn was easily the highlight. There was also an impressionist who had been on Spitting Image who gave me the hideous mental image of Patricia Routledge being spit roasted :-(

Night shift

I'm doing my first night shift for nearly nine months tonight, and there's nothing for me to do so thought I should really write an update, it's only been about three months!

I've not written anything partly due to laziness, partly due to not having much of note to write. Actually it's probably mostly due to laziness!

In January I had to spend two weeks in Erding again for some training. It was probably the least painful trip I've had out there, mainly because Anna joined me for the middle weekend, which we spent mostly drinking beer in Hofbrauhaus in Munich, although we did visit Dachau as well. I have to go back for another few days at the start of April, but most of my team will also be going so it shouldn't be too bad.

We went to Tavira in Portugal for a long weekend a couple of weeks ago, with my mum and brother. Unfortunately the first few days were very wet, and it wasn't until the Sunday that the sun threatened to come out. Still, I wasn't at work so I didn't really care, and go-karting on a wet track was lots of fun!

Not much more to write about. We're going to finish the Sam Smith's challenge this Saturday - after some checking it seems there really are only 32 Sam Smith's pubs in Greater London, so we only have 3 more to do (see here for details).

Gogol Bordello and Manic Street Preachers

I've had a bit of a cold recently, and am still coughing two weeks after first becoming ill :-( Hopefully it will clear up before Christmas... Surprisingly, work have decided to let us have Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve off for free, so now I have just about enough leave left to take the whole period off, woo-hoo!

Went to see Gogol Bordello in Hammersmith on Saturday night. It's probably the first time I've enjoyed the support act more than the main act, La Phaze are supposedly a mixture of drum'n'bass and punk, but it sounded good. I was a bit disappointed by Gogol Bordello, they were brilliant at Glastonbury but that might have been down to the pear cider, plus the fact I'd never heard of them before, I think this time I knew some of the songs and was disappointed when they didn't play them.

Last night we went to see the Manics play Brixton Academy. The support act were Cherry Ghost, who were decidedly average, although I was more interested in checking the football scores on my phone to be fair. For the Manics, it felt more like we were seeing them out of duty, and expectations were quite low, but they were very good, and they did Slash 'n' Burn which is another one I can now tick off... There did seem to be a few 'casuals' there, who seemed to object to us making our way to the front during the first song. Normally I'd agree with them, but as they didn't even seem to recognise the song (which was Motorcycle Emptiness, hardly an obscure song if you're at a Manics gig!) then I was quite happy to push past them. We ended up about four rows off the front... Very knackered today though!

Going to the Race of Champions at Wembley Stadium on Sunday which should be good...