Dave Grohl is a geek
Let’s review the evidence, shall we?
1. Wears black clothes? Check
2. Including black jeans? Check
3. Has slightly-too-long hair? Check
4. Has a dry sense of humour? Check
5. Is in a rock band? Check
6. And plays mad guitar? Check
7. Likes Nirvana? Check (presumably)
8. Is something of a poseur? Check
9. Can play at least the opening bars of Stairway to Heaven? Check
And how did I come to this conclusion? Lots of observation during the gig on Wednesday, of course. It was occasionally distracting to be able to see the whole crowd – given we were up in the gods – because it was just fascinating* to be able to actually watch people moshing, plus all of the little blue lights in the crowd… that would be the mobile phones.
Grohl and the rest of the band were brilliant. Grohl is much a show-man, very capable of playing the crowd – and don’t we just love to be played – and seeming to really enjoy the whole thing himself, which is I think a huge part of it. Only about a third of it was off the new album – which was fine, because I don’t actually know it that well; the rest was old stuff; very nice. They played for 1 3/4 hours, which was a good deal; Kat had come over for it, and it was really cool to go out with her; she is very undemanding. In fact, we are sometimes frighteningly alike, but that is a completely other story.
And this time, the support band didn’t suck; it was the Kaiser Chiefs, and they were cool. I didn’t think I knew them, but I did recognise two of their songs, especially “Predict a riot” or whatever it is.
*I just today discovered that my Roman army tshirt has a spelling mistake; no c in fascinating. Very disappointing.
Wolfmother concerts
I’m not really very committed here, am I?
I went to see Wolfmother at the Forum on November 12. They were as spectacular as expected – the music sounds even better when it’s incredibly loud and there are hundreds of people around you singing along. It’s a bit embarassing to say that this is my first real experience of a rock gig… I never had seen crowd surfing in the flesh before. And I’d certainly never stood that close to a mosh pit before. It was brilliant. I seem to be a bit hooked… Last night, they were playing at the Corner, being broadcast live on 3RRR. It was only a 30 min set (turned out to be 45 min actually), but through a connection we got free tix so the sis and I went along. They were, of course, great again. Quite a different crowd though… I had expected that, at a smaller venue, people would still do the mosh thing and the atmosphere would be even more excited. But it wasn’t. I don’t know if it was just a different crowd who were there, or if most smaller places have the effect, but two weird things happened: Wolfmother were way more energetic on stage than at the Forum – which is weird since it was being broadcast on radio – and the crowd almost seemed apathetic (except for this one loser to my right, who kept on shouting out incredibly stupid and annoying things). I felt conspicuous being I knew the words and was singing along… Oh well. Who cares. I only knew a couple of people there; guess they now think I’m mad. What’s new? New would be me almost verging on groupie-ism. Well, maybe not quite… but I did get Chris Ross’ autograph – that would be the crazy bass/keyboard player.
I must say that the support act for Wolfmother at the Forum was absolute crap. They were the Mess Hall – two blokes, one on guitar that seemed to need tuning every second song, and one on drums. They had some pretty good intros, but every song seemed to deteriorate into the same ‘how loud can we play’ shlock. Very bad.
EMAs
Watching the EMAs on the teev. How the hell does Greenday beat the Foo Fighters to Best Rock of 2005?? Beating U2 I’m fine with – they’re really on the cusp of rock, I think – but the Foos?? As if.
And right now the Gorillaz are ‘performing live’. I had wondered how they would do that – in fact, the sis and I had a discussion about it not two days ago – and now I know; presumably some sort of hologram type thing on stage (I don’t know, but you get the idea), or the people actually there were stooged and we in TV land are the only ones to get the benefit.
The lead singer of System of a Down is a weird looking man.
Since when were The White Stripes alternative?? Goldfrapp, yes; not convinced by Beck being alternative, either, but maybe that’s just me.
The “compere” for the EMAs is really, really bloody annoying.
Inkspell
This is the sequel to Inkheart – I’m sure I’ve raved about Cornelia Funke. I intro’d someone at work to her, he read the first, and then bought the sequel still in hardback (mind you, kids’ books are sooo much cheaper!). He gave it to me, and … well, it is of course brilliant. She certainly doesn’t pull any punches, though. No holding back on tricky issues and not too soppy about some of the characters, either! The feelings of Dustfinger for Resa, and Fenoglio for one of his characters, are certainly not straight forward. I think this is good; it’s real, anyway, which I think is good in a fantasy for kids – helps to think through these things in a less threatening way, or sonething (eh; what do I know).
Aqua Grandparents. Again.
Once again, they have laid eggs when we weren’t looking and they’ve hatched, too. I thought yesterday that they were looking protective, but I didn’t look closely enough. This time they have been laid on the filter intake. And interestingly, there are stacks of unfertilised eggs, too – lots more than there were last time. J wants to save them, but at the moment that would be quite an undertaking – I think that scraping them off the pipe would be more detrimental than beneficial. Maybe when they are free-swimming, if we can get to them before they start dying, or being et.
Empire #2
Oooooookay… I am not sure now that I do want to watch this show. It seems that it will be all about poor little Octavian, the weight of saving Rome on his back, and how he overcomes those nasty Republican types. Now, Cassius and Brutus et al may not have been the nicest of people, and sure they were almost certainly more concerned with preserving their own power than preserving whatever the Republic of Rome was meant to stand for, but still!! Octavian, the poor little boy needing looking after? Octavian, the great hero of a mini-series? No, no, no. Bad nasty bad.
Octavian was a power-hungry, ambitious, nasty little man. I am seriously having second thoughts about watching the whole series now. One more episode…
Empire
I am watching the first episode of Empire, a new TV series on for the summer. It looks all right, mostly – I like the costumes, and the sets are pretty impressive. It starts with Caesar dying – a fictional slave, Tyrannus, is the main character: he is a gladiator chosen to be Caesar’s bodyguard, but he is distracted – obviously – and isn’t there when It happens. Tyrannus then becomes Octavian’s bodyguard.
However. This is a big However. They say Octavian is Caesar’s nephew. I thought I was going a bit mad for a while, until I found a family tree – I was right – Octavian was actually Caesar’s grand-nephew. It may seem a small thing, but to me it is a fairly significant thing to get wrong. And makes the whole thing taste a little sour, sadly.
Hydrangeas
I bought a lovely hydrangea the other day, which I was very excited about. It’s a blue one, which means I need to go buy some make-hydrangeas-blue powder, otherwise it will turn into pink hydrangeas, and we can’t be having that. I’ve put it in the lovely terracotta pot Mum gave us as a housewarming present. it used to have the lavender she also gave us, but I’ve taken that out and put it in the front, in the vain hope that a little more sun will make it come back alive… I fear that my hope is illusory, however. I don’t think it actually will come back to life. Very, very sad about that.
The hydrangeas, though. They’re special.
Alias
When Alias started on TV, we had just got married and did not own a TV. We thought it looked great, but obviously couldn’t watch it. We have, on and off, considered finding the DVDs to watch, but have never got around to it. Until last night, when we hired the first two discs of the first season. It was excellent. We had heard quite conflicting reports from different people, so it was nice not to be disappointed. It could be that as the series progresses, it gets more painful – I can easily imagine that the plot would gt jaded and (dare I say?!) unrealistic, but I really hope they manage to sustain it.
We only watched three episodes. Well; I watched three; J saw two and a half. Which was a real pain, since the third episode ends in a cliff-hanger (I think this clause should end with “of course”; I get the feeling this is going to be something we get used to, and will make us glad that we have the next episode all ready to watch rather than waiting for a week!)… and because I am nice, I decided I couldn’t watch the next episode without him, so I stopped. (He had fallen asleep, in case that wasn’t obvious).
Inkspell
I have just started reading Inkspell, the sequel to Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke. I didn’t buy it; I told a fellow English teacher at school about her, and he read the first one weekend, and then the next week came to school and announced he had bought the sequel and was getting through it, too. (As an aside, I love kids’ books; they’re cheaper than adult books, even when they are the same length!) It is, of course, fantastic, and the style is as enchanting as ever. And I really must make a list of the books quoted at the start of the chapters and find them.
I am still entertained by the publishing house , too – called The Chicken House – and its web address, http://www.doublecluck.com. Tee hee.
Randomly Yours, Alex 