Yo all!

Just a quick message here to let you know that I do have some fairly incredible photos of the Mars Volta (from the Mars Volta gig) to post when I get a chance. I also should have some more Neil young ones too… I just have to get around to tweaking them slightly (in the case of Neil Young) and uploading them (in the case of TMV). In the latter case I used my old Kodak P&S cam to get some pictures without looking like press/carrying around a bulky camera, so as a result the pics probably did suffer loads.

I did however did just suddenly realise how amazing RAW is for shooting images in potentially crap conditions. It’s probably just as excellent in normal more optimal conditions, but I find it really does excel when the light’s pretty low and faces are washed out with flashes and bright lights. It’s probably prettty silly admitting this now - considering I’ve had the camera for 2 and a bit years and it’s never really occured to me to try RAW. The huge file size and slower relative speed probably hindered me trying it. But now that I’ve got a 8gb fast card (from only the best CF Card manufacturer - Lexar) I pushed the boat out and gave it a go! It takes longer to write to the card (read: the red button lights up for longer) but it didn’t seem to hinder my photo taking pace too much (large (enough) buffer size?), which really shows how excellently well made my EOS 350d is. You can read all about how amazing RAW is on various places on the internet, so I won’t be going in to them now - I’ll only mention that some photos that I would have normally discarded due to the overly white light flooding the faces of the subjects were ‘repaired’ to fix this issue almost entirely. Believe me, I was surprised when playing about with the RAW sliders in Aperture when the pic actually began to look good!

This also brings me onto a few finer points about the Canon 350d that I have. While rather old (almost 3 years since released) in a quickly aging digital camera market, it performs excellently. It has had numerous revisions (350d -> 400d -> 450d) which has improved upon/changed one aspect or another of its design/features, but they haven’t necessarily been that great. One issue that I maybe slightly have is that the LCD screen is too small at only 1.8?. While it is entirely practical still for reviewing photos - it would be nice if it was larger (only if it consumed the same or less battery life). There is the LCD status screen (backlit too) which is excellent for sorting out shutter speeds and settings etc. which has been removed from the revisions in place of a larger single LCD that displays the info (albeit not all the time and using more battery life?). I haven’t used the current single lcd system, so I’m really unsure as to it’s advantages at the mo, then again I’m happy with what I have. Another quibble is the APS-C sensor size (or whatever it’s called) where there happens to be a 1.6x crop/zoom on the FoV. This is sorted in larger more expensive lines - but currently it annoys me when using a 17mm fisheye!

The new models also have a feature where the sensor can be cleaned/dust shaken off? - whether this is completely necessary and useful I’m not sure, but it sure sounds fancy! Then again if you do go for one of the newer revisions, then you’d have more meagapixels thus a larger pixel density on the same size CMOS sensor, thus possibly increasing noise in the image (but also allowing larger images to be printed). I saw a rather good argument about it somewhere, but basically it stated that more pixels doesn’t necessarily equal better quality! So in a sense, I think that 8 MP is probably good enough for the camera I have and the photos that I take.

Another small thing to point out - I just noticed this and it well, made me happy, is that when the card is still writing to the camera and you switch the camera off (whether accidental or not) the images continue to be written to the card. This is probably (like RAW) a standard feature of DSLRs, but I just realised how great it is! Other small things continue to amaze me - and I’ll try and point them out in due course! On a sad note unfortunately, I lost the rubber eyepiece hood thingummy while away in Europe and while it doesn’t really make any difference to the functionality of the camera, it looks a bit silly and costs too much to warrant replacing!

Following my escapades on Monday night involving an amazing Neil Young concert, here’s some sort of write up/review thingummy.

The Edinburgh Playhouse is a pretty good venue for music if it’s the kind where you’re sitting down and well not moshing or dancing in an extreme fashion etc. Unlike many other venues in Scotland it is actually designed for shows/music and is not a sports stadium, so as a result the sound is noticeably better. The only disadvantage I suppose in a seated gig is the hassle of getting good seats – you really have to be incredibly early when getting the tickets, and even then you’re never going to get front row unless you eBay it – and spend many hundreds in the process! Luckily (or should I say skilfully) however, we managed to get fairly awesome seats. Though it looked from the seating plan that we were the front row of the second block of seats, we were actually the second row, but that was still pretty incredible. We had seats on the far left, so we had a reasonably amazing view of the stage, it was so close too (within 15-20m)!

From readings and ramblings about the gig before I had worked out that it was his wife, Pegi, supporting, then he would come on for an acoustic set and finally Crazy Horse (naturally not the complete original one, but a very good line up nonetheless) would join him and rock the evening away so to speak. Pegi Young’s music was largely pretty enjoyable – fairly country, actually on second thoughts it pretty much was solid country music, but it was good and her backing band/musicians were great. At around 815 or thereabouts, Neil Young entered the stage to roaring applause! I didn’t realise that he was such a tall person in real life – at first actually I didn’t recognise him, but the classic hair gave it away! There was a nice circle of acoustic guitars set up on stage with a seat in the middle and a table with a fairly vast collection of harmonicas. Also worth noting was the huge (I mean huge) amount of stage clutter. This stage looked like the prop room for some theatre, with an easel set up, a huge turbine fan and endless amounts of other stuff… (And I thought The Arcade Fire’s stage looked cluttered!). He started with From Hank To Hendrix, from Harvest Moon – which was played amazingly and was one of the songs that I really expected to hear after listening to various other gigs that he had done since Harvest Moon. While he looked slightly older than his glory days (not that they’re really over – he’s incredible still) he sounded amazing. He still has his same high voice, in that whiny style, which when you hear it, you know for certain is Neil Young. Of all of Neil Young’s albums, I think I prefer the earlier ones, from the late 60s and early 70s. Of them I might have to say that On The Beach is a particular classic! Even more importantly, the song Ambulance Blues is phenomenal – providing a full 9 minutes of folky/chilled out acoustic Neil Young bliss! That said, I really didn’t expect him to play this live. It just seemed like one of those songs that weren’t too popular on the album and well it would be too long to play live, especially if not that many people knew it. Then again, this was Neil Young – who played a concert where he told the audience that he would play through some of his new material and then play some stuff that they had heard before. He proceeded, in this case by playing the new material, and then playing the new material again! Not exactly a conventionalist at times! So really I suppose there was a possibility that he would play Ambulance Blues – and by god he did! I’m sure some people there were a bit ‘huh?’ when it came to this song, but it was truly surreal to hear it live, especially just an acoustic rendition!

After Ambulance Blues, he played a song that I wasn’t particularly sure of, but after that, another complete shocker – A Man Needs A Maid! This is another early song, from Harvest in this case, but a very odd one, one which my dad thinks has particularly dire lyrics and isn’t really a great song – naturally I disagree! The album version of this has a complete cinematic/movie soundtrack orchestra beginning and interlude occasionally, which is why I didn’t really expect to hear it being played. For these mythical parts of the song, Neil used a small synthesized keyboard perched on top of his yellow and pink baby grand piano to amazing effect. This tiny thing sounded impressively good, and the whole switching between the two instruments mid-song was wonderful! After another unbeknown song to me, Neil launched into some classics from the early days – Harvest (from Harvest), After The Gold Rush (from the album of the same name) and Mellow My Mind (from Tonight’s The Night, not THAT early an album!). These Neil Young classics were presented skilfully – and unnervingly as good as the originals, with the high pitched vocals of After The Gold Rush cutting through the cool dark air of the auditorium. This also had very nicely altered and relevant lyrics – “Look at mother nature on the run in the 21st Century”. After another unknown song, I was treated to more classics from After The Gold Rush and Harvest in the form of Don’t Let It Bring You Down, Heart Of Gold and Old Man, bringing the acoustic set to an end. Overall, this was an unbelievable first half – with 4 songs from another of my favourite albums, Harvest, being played!

Before the second half, where Crazy Horse would join Neil to rock the rest of the evening away, there was a 30 minute break. This was probably needed owing to the fairly high average age of the crowd, and Neil Young too! When thinking about what songs might be played beforehand, I was fairly sure that I wouldn’t know too many from the second half, as I never really got that into Chrome Dreams II and Ragged Glory, and I don’t even have Rust Never Sleeps. But from the songs that he played, I was pleasantly surprised (yet again!). Mr. Soul kicked off the second half. This was announced as such by a painting being put up displaying the song title – which was very useful considering I had only heard some songs a few times on live albums. Dirty Old Man, from Chrome Dreams II was played after, which was a fairly incredible performance with Neil playing some sweet lead guitar and absolutely spot on vocals! One song played in the second half that I was particularly looking forward to and wasn’t sure if he’d actually play it was Down By The River. To my complete surprise and enjoyment – he did, with an absolutely sensational instrumental/solo section and awesome backing vocals for the chorus. Some of the next few songs were good, but to be honest I didn’t really recognise many of them – apart from Hey Hey, My My of course. A huge surprise came when he played No Hidden Path from Chrome Dreams II. Along with Ordinary People, No Hidden Path was one of those songs that you’d think would never be played live, mainly due to their length and what could be regarded as their album filler-like qualities by a cynic. Then again, this is Neil Young and he pretty much does what he wants when he playing – so an obscenely drawn out 20 minute version of No Hidden Path resulted. This was an incredible performance, with some wild solos and anthemic choruses. The tall, slightly stooped over figure of Neil hunching over his guitar ripping out solos was an image to remember.

You could slightly tell that with such a long song as No Hidden Path, the set was nearing the end. Sure enough, when the epic chorus had died down for the last time, the stage was vacated. But no-one was going to leave without an encore, and what an encore it was! Another song on my list of ‘songs that he probably won’t play but I’d like him to’ was Fuckin’ Up from Ragged Glory. I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t expect him to play this, but I’m really glad that he did! As soon as the drum intro came in, accompanied a bar later by that signature guitar riff I knew that I was in for yet another treat. Some other folk in the audience however didn’t really appreciate either a) more grunge/modern Neil Young or b) the foul language in this song, so as a result they didn’t look particularly impressed. Not cool. Finally, to finish off a stellar evening of music, the 1969 classic – Cinnamon Girl! Yet again, I was so overjoyed at his amazing choice of the classic songs that he was playing, and what better song could he have played to finish off than Cinnamon Girl?

From looking at Neil Young at the start of the gig, he looked pretty old, I’m not going to lie there, but at any point, if I even dared to do so, I should never have assumed that he was incapable of rocking out in the way that he did! He was and still clearly is incredible and just has to be seen live in order to appreciate his magnificence.

On a final note, there were some other songs that I wished that he might possibly have played, which he unfortunately didn’t. These included:
Cowgirl In The Sand
Cortez The Killer
Needle And The Damage Done

On Monday evening I was at an absolutely amazing gig - Neil Young playing at Edinburgh Playhouse. He started with an acoustic first half playing some absolute classics - Ambulance Blues; and A Man Needs A Maid; among others. He then came back for the second half with Crazy Horse to play some serious rock/grunge. I’ll comment a bit more on the gig later, but for now I thought I’d post an surprisingly good photo that I took.

Though I am presently unable to update the small album of the week selection at the top right of the page (my Wordpress plug-in writing knowledge does not extend to such heights as writing user interfaces, or at least text boxes where one can insert the name of the album and a link to the picture. So I have to wait till I go home and am able to edit the actual plug-in file. Oh well…), I really do have a few ideas as what the next album of the week may be.

Firstly, I thought that I should really get around to listening to some of the music that I had bought recently that is a little weird and more B-side material. So in this category I have the OK Computer B-side EP – the Airbag/How Am I Driving EP which was recently re-released (if you’re American) or released (if you’re British). This contains Airbag and then all of the B-sides from the singles on that album. These include such tracks as Melatonin, Polyethylene (Parts 1&2), Palo Alto and Meeting In The Aisle, just to name a few… While you’d expect this (as a CD of B-sides) to not be particularly good and not really good enough to be put on the actual album (which is slightly phenomenal in this case), you might be surprised as there are some really quite excellent cuts on here. Naturally you’ve got Airbag, which you should already know is a great song, but take Pearly for example – it has a nice classic depressing Radiohead sort of sound to it. The sort of sound that you’d expect from The Bends or OK Computer era – pretty much what you’d expect. The 3rd track – Meeting In The Aisle is fundamentally very different and strangely more electronic. The drums sound considerably more synthesized and the guitars and backing instruments are producing much more of an ambient sort of sound. This isn’t what you might expect from the kind of stuff that Radiohead was producing in 1997. It sounds much more like it was taken from the Amnesiac/Kid A era. A Reminder, the song following Meeting In The Aisle again follows the same themes and ideas in terms of its more ambient approach – it even has what sounds like the announcer from a French train station at the start. Though the vocals in this case are much more what you’d expect from an OK Computer B-side, sounding vaguely similar to The Tourist rather than anything else.

It isn’t just the next two albums that are hinted at within this EP, from listening to Polyethylene (Parts 1&2), especially the first part, I can hear a similar kind of sound to In Rainbows, or at least I think that’s what it most sounds like. While this seems very bizarre, as In Rainbows is another 10 years down the line – it suggests that a lot of the music contained here is largely experimental and may be rough ideas being thrown around – ones that may even be used again to some extent in the future. Though this may be the case with Polyethylene, it applies only to the first part of it. The second part turns largely into a song that sounds like it is right off The Bends in terms of its rock sound to it, though the chord sequence is intrinsically odd, as are the lyrics, which are much more OK Computerish,

“Leukaemia, schizophrenia, polyethylene. There is no significant risk to your health.”

Overall, this song is one of the more powerful ones on this EP, and is definitely worth a listen.

If you thought the whole ‘sound of what may be to come’ concept was over in this album, then Melatonin blows this right out of the water. It sounds way too much like All I Need from In Rainbows (or should it be the other way around?) with the string backing and the drums at the start, but unlike All I Need it doesn’t really change from this sounds. However, Melatonin’s lyrics remain firmly planted in OK Computer territory with the alienation in modern capitalistic society theme,

“Don’t forget, that you are our son. Now go back to bed.
We just know that you’ll do well, you won’t come to harm.
Death to all who stand in your way. Wake my dear.”

N.B. One could argue here that some of these lyrics sound dark, foreboding and possibly dangerous in a similar way to We Suck Young Blood from Hail To The Thief, where the themes and concepts of the loss of innocence, especially with the young are present. Though the two songs are unrelated there could be such a linking of themes…

The final song on this EP, Palo Alto, definitely, yet again and most unsurprisingly has the OK Computer theme going on with its lyrics.

“In a city of the future?
It is difficult to concentrate?
Meet the boss, meet the wife?
Everybody’s happy?
Everyone is made for life.”

Unlike the other songs on OK Computer and Airbag/How Am I Driving where the alienation and modern society theme is thrown around and touched on slightly, Palo Alto addresses it fully. The first verse (above) starts with a happy portrayal of what is currently going on in the world. Though rather ironic and possibly sarcastic at times (‘Everybody’s happy’), the optimism is realised. In later verses, the realisation (i.e. the harsh reality) becomes apparent.

“In a city of the future?
It is difficult to find a space?
I’m too busy to see you?
You’re too busy to wait.”

The whole “I’m too busy to see you” idea suggests that no-one really matters and that that there may be a sense of alienation where people do not care about other people anymore. What becomes clear here is that the time for understanding and paying attention to others is over, modern society does not allow time for it. Finally, to finish off the song and to continue to enforce the whole idea of the destruction of values and overall change, greetings are exchanged. The utmost bleakness and complete blandness of these greetings just continue to depict the future in a crudely sarcastic manner.

“I’m okay, how are you??
Thanks for asking, thanks for asking?
But I’m okay, how are you??
I hope you’re okay too.”

The word okay is especially resonant in this case as it emphasizes how average and naff everything has become. The repetition just adds to it, suggesting that everyone now just has automated replies where they are merely okay and then ask how the other person is. It shows a sense of detachedness from a personal viewpoint – everyone is a machine built for work and work only, they need not have any social skills (very 1984 themed), ingrained also in this verse (and in the complete album and song too) is the continuing theme of people not caring for others due to the fact that it simply isn’t necessary anymore.

As a background to this, it might be worth noting that Palo Alto is a city in California, in the North of Silicon Valley. This is where the reference of ‘In a city of the future’ comes from. Being in Silicon Valley, you would expect Palo Alto to be very technologically advanced, thus almost seen as a Utopia of the future and a good basis for this song. Getting back to the actual music, the style of Palo Alto is akin to The Bends and possibly has some of the very then Indie sound of Pablo Honey. This naturally gives a good spread of Radiohead styles throughout this EP.

Overall, this is a truly phenomenal EP. It might sound particularly odd at first and like a mishmash of B-sides, but on a second or closer listen it’s clear that this is a bridging album between the very contrasting styles of OK Computer and Kid A/Amnesiac, it could almost be regarded as a sequel to OK Computer. It has a bit of everything that Radiohead has done, and some stuff that they might still do, but overall it acts as a brilliant complement to OK Computer. Enjoy!

One of my last posts ended with

More on that another time…

This time, I thought I should actually write more!

To start off, Shure are a brilliant company, I have nothing against them, and they make brilliant products. Not only in the microphone side of things – SM57 and SM58, two classic mics, but also with headphones. I’m not sure whether the whole headphone (esp. the noise cancelling isolating variety) department is a new one at Shure, but they have some things right, and others wrong.

For starters, even if the headphone (or should I say earphone) department is flawed, then the PR/Customer Service side makes up for it. Then again, if you buy a product that doesn’t work well then you should expect a replacement or a refund, so on second thought; customer service is merely just doing its job.

Getting back to the point, I have bought or rather received two Shure products recently, the Shure SE210 noise isolating earphones, and the Shure MPA-3C adaptor. The former was a replacement for my Shure E3-C earphones that, well, decided to separate in my ear so the little rubber bit got lodged pretty far down inside… not good! The Shure E3-C earphones were a replacement themselves for a pair of E2-C earphones which frayed around the ear part and stopped working (that happened with two pairs). You might now be thinking that these headphones aren’t particularly reliable and not very good. Personally I don’t think this is the case. I was just unlucky with the first generation of earphones (I think the E2-C and E3-C may have been after all). At the end of the day though I keep coming back for a few reasons,

I can’t afford Bose headphones.

I doubt Bose headphones are better, I know their in ear ones aren’t.

Sennheiser suck in comparison to Shure.

You don’t realise how bad ‘normal’ headphones are until you change back and hear all the background noise.

I don’t have to pay any extra to get them replaced, thus continuing to use them is a free option, unless of course they break outside of the 2 years, in which case I’ll be screwed. That won’t happen though, will it?

They’re damn decent to listen to music through!

Overall, the E3-C headphones are very similar to the E2-Cs that I originally reviewed except that they sound better, cost more and hopefully shouldn’t break. They’re also modular, which leads me onto my next point, the Shure Music Phone Adaptor.

I knew my solution to the iPhone headphone socket problem was not going to be great and flawless for ever (even though it wasn’t particularly at the moment), so I splashed out on one of these bad boys, a Shure MPA-3C. I say splashed out, I mean that it cost me almost £50 to get it, that’s a lot for a cable, then again it has a Shure mic in it, which is generally a pretty good thing! It does make for an expensive headphone cable overall though at about £150! Summing it up in a few words, I would say that it does its job. It lets you use your Shure headphones (or any others in fact) with the iPhone. It will be a horrifically long cable when using anything other than modular headphones and even then the mic is far away from your mouth. It will also sound damn weird (and you’ll look really stupid) when you’re speaking to someone through them. I’m over it…

I would recommend both products to the iPhone user who cares about the quality of what they hear and wants functionality and style at the same time. The only criticism is that they’re quite expensive so you should work your way up through the various Shure products, getting them replaced one by one. Soon enough you’ll have the SE530s!

I really really didn’t know what to think about this album when I first got it. Fair enough John Mayer is a superb guitarist, but I had got into him through listening to Continuum and not his earlier more Pop orientated works. In truth, I had got round to buying Heavier Things and Room For Squares, but I got them at the same time as this album so didn’t really give just one my attention. I also find listening to a live album when you don’t really know the artist’s music not great, especially so in this case, as the amount of long intros and extended solo parts, while very good, would not be of much interest to someone just getting into the artist.

Eventually though, I did start to quite like Heavier Things, especially the first few songs, but primarily the last three - ‘Daughters’, ‘Wheel’ and ‘Only Heart’. The songs in between were good too, but they just didn’t stand out like the end of the album. Moving onto ‘Room For Squares’, at first I thought it was a bit mediocre, a bit average, know what I mean. After a few listens though you start to like it, getting into such songs as ‘Neon’, ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’ and the Daughters-like track, ‘St. Patrick’s Day’. Having listened to these albums now, and ultimately realising that John Mayer wasn’t just some Blues aficionado, I thought I’d give a ‘Any Given Thursday’ a listen (eventually).

As with listening to most albums (live ones espesh) the first few times, you do recognise some songs, and think, ‘Yeah, they’re pretty good.’ But with the rest, you don’t really get into them and think they’re a bit self indulgent. Yeah, at the end of the day they probably are pretty self indulgent, but you know what, I love it! He’s a great guitarist, so why not show it off? Anyhoo, getting round to the actual point of this paragraph, the songs which I haven’t heard before on the album, primarily ‘Lenny/Man On The Side’ and ‘Comfortable’ are some of the best, in fact they’re just brilliant. Fair enough ‘Comfortable’ is on the ‘Inside Wants Out EP’, which I should really have, but ‘Lenny/Man On The Side’, half of which is a Stevie Ray Vaughn song, is awesome!

The only criticism that I have with Any Given Thursday is that it doesn’t contain many of his newer songs. In essence it is primarily ‘Room For Squares’ that is featured, and one song from ‘Heavier Things’. There are no Continuum songs, but I guess at that point, the majority hadn’t been written, so why should I expect there to be any? Overall though, with what is there is, it’s brilliant and definitely due a listen if you’re any sort of John Mayer fan!

Just to put everyone who sees this in a festive mood, I’ve included a picture of my advent calendar. Isn’t it just so gratuitously childish!

I’m thinking up some interesting posts on UI and some also on ID (industrial design), I’m finding the design of these things pretty thrilling at the moment!

As for music, some awesome stuff is coming our way in 2008! Firstly, The Bedlam In Goliath, the Mars Volta’s new album will be joining us. I also have Mars Volta tickets for their next tour in March, so I’m pretty thrilled about that! Actually seriously thrilled - they’re just one of those groups that I really wanted to see live but never really had the opportunity to. I also have some Radiohead tickets (second time to see them!) which will be pretty incredible, due to their recent album sounding so great!

As for the album of the week, I’ve really been into lots of different things this week, Massive Attack, Air, Neil Young, Esteban Morgado and Wolfmother to name but a few. But the best album that I’ve been ‘tapping’ is Ibrahim Ferrer’s solo album from Buena Vista Social Club. It’s absolutely fantastically mastered and mixed, producing such a brilliant sound. The track ‘Cienfuegos Tiene Su Guaguanco’ being generally unbelievable… Especially the piano solo and the horns!

As the title might slightly suggest, yesterday was a pretty good day. Firstly there was the opening of the first Apple store in Scotland, in Glasgow on Buchanan Street. I was lucky enough to attend this, and wait in the queue and be one of the first to be in the store, obviously I wasn’t the first as I hadn’t been there since last night… but if that floats your boat! It was a pretty cool store though, they’d completely redone the building on the inside so it looked really immense with the glass stairs, granite tiled floor and open stone work on the walls which looked pretty cool! I grabbed a few pictures which I’ll add at a later date… I got the Apple T-Shirt, the classic one that everyone gets if they’re one of the first to the new store. I missed out on one of these in Shibuya in Tokyo, but at least I got one now… Finally an Apple store has opened, hopefully putting an end to the monopoly in central Scotland that is Scotsys.

The other awesome thing that happened yesterday was the reopening of Fopp. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Fopp had ‘died’. But luckily or should I say unluckily HMV has bought it and reopened some of its stores, so the best way of CD shopping has been revived! It was just great to finally go to a proper CD shop once again. The times without Fopp had made me so annoyed and pissed off when I went into HMV and saw their attempt at good deals - 2 CDs for £10 or Virgin’s deal - 4 CDs for £20, when Fopp managed to sell them for £5 each in an even more pleasant record environment. Unfortunately though, I think some of the prices have risen slightly, especially on the new/chart CDs. Well at least its back…

Hmm, I look at this site when I log into it whenever (and where-ever) I write it and I think, “It would looks so much better if it was remotely consistent in the whole colour scheme of things. In fact, I have started changing the style sheet/theme for the ‘red’ theme as I have aptly named it and it should be appearing sometime in the next week! Oh well, I’ll just have to wait!

I attended a Red Hot Chili Pepper concert last night at ‘Scotland’s National Stadium,’ Hampden Park! It shouldn’t really be Scotland’s national stadium mainly because it isn’t in Edinburgh, it has really crap transport links (the closest train station is 5 minutes away, and the Police blocked the only entrance that I remembered) and generally its just not good enough to be Scotland’s national stadium. Anyhoo, the concert was pretty awesome; the supporting acts were ‘Reverand and The Makers’ and ‘Biffy Clyro,’ who weren’t that bad (surprisingly) but were nothing compared to what the Chilis used to have supporting them (The Mars Volta!) or what Radiohead had (Deerhoof and Beck!). But still at least it was remotely listenable.. (cough cough… Wolfmother’s support group - ‘Wolf and Cub’ cough!).

The sad thing is that I went to see the Chilis last year at T In The Park, and I still felt the need to fork out £50 to see them again. The good thing is that they are an awesome live band, they never get tiring, as they do some sweet on-the-spot jams (wait a sec, isn’t that the point of a jam…? Oh well!) and they played almost a completely different set! Before at T 2006 the set they played was pretty much the one that was played at the Live At Lyon bootleg/real DVD/TV show because it was that tour. That was a pretty good set, but in my opinion I reckon the set that they played last night was better. It comprised of so many ‘other’ songs, like the ones that aren’t singles on the album, and the ones that fewer people would know unless they had bought the album… These were ones such as “So Much I”, “Emit Remmus”, “Get On Top”, “She’s Only 18″ and others like that. Flea even had the audacity to bring out his trumpet, which was great fun!

All went well, but great thanks to Citylink, the coach company that felt the need to organise extra coaches at 12 midnight to make sure that everyone got home okay. Even if the driver was about to fall asleep…

While I was away at T in the Park watching various artists, and having a brilliant time, there was Live Earth on in all continents. This also had some amazing artists, including Wolfmother, John Mayer, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (they only played one song though), Jack Johnson and many others. The great thing about this is that you are able to watch the concert online whenever and where-ever you want. This is really quite brilliant, as in my case I was away in the middle of a field, thus unable to watch it live on TV, so I watched all of the music that I thought looked good last night at my own freedom. This is a great idea as currently with T in the Park they don’t broadcast some of the artists… Brian Wilson in particular! which meant that I wasn’t on TV even though I was in the front row right against the barrier the whole time! It would be much better if they did this, giving me a chance to see a) myself on TV b) the concerts that I wanted to see again and c) and the concerts that I missed due to other ones being on at the same time… Then again if they did this in its entirety, then it would remove the need to go to the concert for some people, thus they would lose money and a downward spiral etc. But nonetheless it is a good idea AND wishful thinking…

One annoying thing about watching the Live Earth concerts on MSN video thing, is that they have so many adverts!!! Seeing as they are trying to save the earth with this concert, why have Chevy advertising. Fair enough they are advertising the ‘Hybrid’ models and an ‘Electric’ car that can’t actually be bought!!! (read the small print!), but they are also advertising that they have good fuel efficiency!! They state this good fuel efficiency as being better than 30MPG on most of their models. This is truly obscene. In Britain, the majority of cars have efficiencies over 30mpg, even if they run on Petrol as opposed to Diesel, but still, it is completely wrong to boast that cars get better efficiency that 30MPG when it is such an extremely meagre amount… Fair enough boast that it is more than 45 or 50MPG if it is petrol powered or more than 60 or 65MPG if it is Diesel. My last car, the Peugeot 106 Diesel got double that efficiency and it was at least 10 years old. If you read it closer too, it says that they have better than 30MPG HWY (which I assume means Highway), thus the European equivalent of Extra-Urban, the best/optimal figure that can be achieved. Most fuel consumption figures in Britain are quoted as the Combined Cycle, which is a mix of the two values (Urban (worst) and Extra-Urban (best)). Thus not not only is Chevy quoting a terrible value as being good, it is misquoting it, by stating an uncomparable figure. Absolutely terrible…