Anyway, just an update, I’ll post more about my exciting times in due course!

Need to sort a few things out first however! I’ll literally have like 10 days maximum at home before I go off to Cambridge, so I’ll really need to think about getting EVERYTHING ready for University before I go - which means a hella lot of student bank accounts, loans and other such things which I haven’t thought of yet, but I’ll know I’ll have to do! Pretty crazy stuff!

Probably mentioned it before, but I’ll need to get a laptop for University. I have this huge suspicion there’s gonna be a nice new Macbook on June 9th. SO deff going to wait till then - and even then I think that I’ll be waiting until I get back till I get one. In a way I see a point in getting one before I go, but I somehow can’t see me affording it! In anycase, I have debated between getting a MacBook Pro or not, but the huge difference in price kinda does put me off, and the size I think might be an issue too! However I do plan on getting the almost highest spec MacBook and then pimping out the RAM (with that amazingly cheap Crucial RAM) and HD (Samsung have a gloriusly cool 9.5mm high 2.5? SATA 500Gb coming out this Summer) myself for added coolness at a reasonable price!

I’d also like to get another camera that I can actually carry around easily and take decent pictures with. As I’ve said before, I do have a EOS 350d which is excellent, but too large for social use, so I want to get the smallest and cheapest Ixus available to carry around and use whenever I want! I still do have a working Kodak DX6340, but it’s not that great, and is rather too bulky - so not really worth a shout! Originally thinking that I was going to get the Ixus 70 which looks superb, small and thankfully the cheapest Ixus model, I have now realised/seen that a Ixus 75 exists! Oh, on a sidenote, I’m not really going to bother myself with getting anything other than a Canon. It might a bad thing not to look at any other manufacturers, but Canon totally rule and you can’t beat the prices in their outlet store - so I’ll just stay with them thankyou very very much! Anyway, I did happen to try out an Ixus 75, which I think is considerably better than the 70. Then only real differences are that the 75 has a larger 3? screen and no viewfinder and the 70 has a 2.5? screen and a viewfinder, and also, the 75 is very slightly bigger and heavier (like 10g max!) but not enough to let me choose otherwise! I would normally have chosen the one with the viewfinder, but honestly, I don’t think I could be assed using such a small inaccurate viewfinder such as the ones found on cameras that size. The batteries these days have also got a fair bit better than 5 years ago and using a viewfinder won’t kill the battery in c. 5 mins. A small other thing I noticed about the 75 as opposed to the 70 is that due to there being less space on the back of the camera - as a result of the larger screen, they have had to get rid of the stupid (in my opinion) slider that toggles between play, record and movie modes and have now added a button to review images instead! This is much much better and allows you to just half press down the shutter button after reviewing the images to go back to record mode instead of fiddling with the stupid slider and then having to press the shutter button to take a photo. I’m happy! The price difference is theoretically only £10 or so on eBay, I just have to wait for the prices to drop a wee bit so they’re down at the £80ish mark again insteadof the horrific £103 or so that one went for on the weekend! Can’t believe that an idiot actually bid that amount considering the same eBay store is offering the very same camera on buy it now for £89! Fool!

Anyway, enough of my fashionably random rant for now…!

Gmail is generally awesome on it’s own, just as a webmail client. It beats hotmail/live and yahoo and whatever else is thrown at it hands down with its general simplicity, keyboard shortcuts, space and pretty much anything else (it even has a mark as read button - Hotmail did not!). Then I was lucky enough to discover that Gmail had POP! Wow! That was such a relief, an ISP independant free email service that offered POP. It was amazing enough to replace my current default email address (which at that time was at virgin.net!). POP was absolutely peachy for so long, and in fact it still would be had I not discovered that IMAP was actually working on my account. On updating my iPhone to 1.1.4, the Gmail automatically interfaced with the IMAP side of Gmail, and not the POP side, which I thought was very odd initially. Partly because I had no experience with IMAP before and also partly due to the fact that my Gmail mailboxes were set up in a special way so that all of the read mail on my Mac would move to the All Mail folder, thus the inbox would only contain the old messages from before I changed this setting! As soon as my iPhone’s mail was up and running, it started to retrieve all these old messages and these folders too (Starred, All Mail, etc.) and I was a bit ‘wtf?’. But I eventually caught on to the fact that it was IMAP, and subsequently changed the settings on Mail to use Gmail as IMAP and disable the POP account, so that all my new mail was done thru IMAP.

This was initially such a revolution. Previously when I read my mail from either my phone or my Mac, it would still appear on the other as unread, so if I perchance, went a while without checking one or the other, then when I did check it, it would have lots and lots of new messages! Not really a great thing! Now with IMAP, all the messages are pretty much synchronized so that if I read one in one place, it’ll appear in the other place still, but read! Isn’t that incredible! I still haven’t got over it clearly, and to think I’ve been missing this for what, 22 years!.

Anyway, the point hat I’m getting at is that now I’m all clued in with IMAP, the POP accounts I have and use sometimes, such as my mohoyt.com one, still dump all of their messages in my mailbox even though I’ve read like all of them! It’s really quite irratating! But I’m over it!

Matchbox 20 have been around for quite a few years now, originally starting as Tabitha’s Secret and then gaining more members and becoming Matchbox 20 - releasing More Than You Think You Are, Yourself or Somebody Like You, Mad Season and Exile On Mainstream (but not necessarily in that order). As with some of these bands that come from the States with a fairly rock vibe, maybe with an acoustic kind of sound at one point or another, they never really seem to get too popular over here! You never really hear much radioplay from them, even though they’ve just had a new album out with some pretty solid singles, you just don’t hear much. Maybe the British crowd doesn’t do this kind of music or it could be some kind of niche. I don’t know, but whatever, I was surprised they were doing a stadium tour here. They had played Wembley a few nights before coming to Glasgow, and well that’s a pretty big arena (though I read somewhere that they might be better in a smaller place) so they obviously must have some following over here. I was fairly close to the front for the whole gig (standing in the second row) and got a pretty good view of everything except the size of the crowd. There were a lot of people there, I could hear them for the most part, but I just couldn’t see how far back the dense crowds went (I swear the SECC floor isn’t completely flat!), so my opinions of popularity at this concert will have to be withheld temporarily.

Anyway, back to the music and so on. The support band were a 5 piece rock (and apparently indie) group from Nottingham called Headway. Their music reminded me quite a lot of Snow Patrol to be honest, and in their second song I could totally hear some Radiohead influences too. Not a particularly indie sound though, but I think that’s probably a good thing! They had long curly hair and wore tight jeans (NB - the lead singer/guitarist exhibited jeans with a level of tightness that I had never before seen! Go him!) - so were definitely keeping up with the Indie front there! They played a fairly short set - maybe 30/40 mins or so, and overall I thought it was pretty enjoyable - they didn’t get too good a reception at first, but the crowd got going by the third song or so and they seemed to enjoy themselves from then onwards. As I learnt, from both being told by the frontman of Headway, and through being given a flyer, they do have an EP out on iTunes and on Myspace, which I might go check out if I get a chance…

After a half hour wait or so while the roadies cleared the stage and set up all of the new stuff, Matchbox 20 came on! They had some interesting dialog being played overhead as they came in, with the huge video screens behind them showing a chair and then a door (not too sure of any significance there), the members of the band ran on to the stage (minus Rob Thomas at this point (of course)) and started playing their newest single ‘How Far We’ve Come’. Rob Thomas did eventually join the rest of the band onstage to start the song, and it was a good start at that! Throughout the night, they played a barrage of their famous songs mixed in with some of their not so famous ones, with the majority of songs coming from their two recent (proper albums), More Than You Think You Are and Mad Season (I don’t think Exile On Mainstream should really be counted as an album as it contains at most 6 new songs and then some other of their ‘best of’ from previous albums - it should really just be an EP with a few bonus cuts on it!). Thinking about it - they probably played most of the songs on the Exile On Mainstream album, as the tour was called Exile In The UK, so doing such a thing would make sense, but as I haven’t bothered listening to the old songs on Exile, I’m not sure. They did play a nice selection of hits though, including 3am (one of the original Tabitha’s Secret songs), Unwell, Bright Lights and Rest Stop. If they could have played any more, then I would have hoped for Mad Season and Bent The Burn (both from Mad Season coincidentally), but otherwise I enjoyed it.

Correction: They did sing Bent last night, the song that I wanted to hear was The Burn! Oops!

There were a few things I did note while at the concert, which I really think I should add instead of writing a song by song commentary of the concert (which I imagine anyone could do (even if they weren’t there!). Anyway, firstly, some of them were wearing pretty silly jackets and heavy coats at the start of the concert. I just thought it was worth mentioning as it begs the question, why? It’s not as if Scotland was that cold yesterday, and they were inside anyway. But then again if it was part of the stage presence/routine kind of thing, they why weren’t all of the band wearing them? The bassist, the drummer and the keyboardist/backup guitarist didn’t look like they were complying completely, so I’m not really sure what was going on there! Secondly, Rob Thomas sweats ALOT! Dude, this guy was sweating before he even came out on to the stage I imagine - and he was wearing a jacket! When he took off the jacket originally, I thought, ‘oh, that’s an interesting t shirt pattern he’s got there’, I then realised that it was just sweat! Wow! I don’t mind or anything - it’s just I was surprised - he went through a t shirt pretty quickly there. But at the end of the day he sang pretty damn well, so it didn’t really matter if he was damp dripping.

Third point. No offense to Paul or anything, but I’m sure he made himself redundant in some songs by changing from Drums to guitar. He tries to look busy with his oversized Gibson/Epiphone hollow body monstrosity, but I’m not sure that taking him out of the song would make too much difference. In some places he was singing, and playing piano (which was mixed up waaay too much may I add) which was great, but in other places, I think he was just playing/holding a guitar for the sake of it. His official role now is rythym guitarist, so one could argue that he’s doing what he should be, but I think he could slip in the odd solo now and then, maybe even trade solos with Kyle Cook? That’s if he can play more than just chords… He also had a habit of running across the stage from one side to another, strumming away, which just occured to me as being pretty odd and unnecessary (if he was soloing then it would have been more than okay), and oh, last thing, he could have removed his jacket - everyone else had done so by the end - or maybe he really was cold!

Fourth point. The crowd there were surprisingly varied. They attracted an odd group of people, old and young alike, which while was not surprising, was intriguing!

Fifth point. Though the roadies may suck, don’t give them a hard time about it! Yeah, we were told not to mention this, but the organ stopped working at some point into the gig. At first they did a pretty good job, with Rob freestyling some lyrics, but they had to just go back to it at the end! Must have been some cable unplugged somewhere, but that’s not good at the best of times. They also had this whole wireless chat going on, with everyone using wireless mikes and guitars… This inevitably made it easier to change instruments and also to walk about - which they did do a fair amount - it led to quite a few situations where they were about to start a song and one of the guitars didn’t work (not a coincidence or anything, but it was always Doucette’s that it seemed to happen to - I think they’re telling him something!). At times I felt a bit bad for the roadies and techies as the band were giving them shit at points when their stuff wasn’t working, but then again, if the roadies and techies are paid to make it all work, then surely it should be okay to get angry at them if it doesn’t, so fair enough that they were given some stick!

Sixth point. I’m not sure at what point this happened in Matchbox 20’s lifespan, probably around the time when Rob Thomas went off to do his solo album and Smooth for Santana, but at times it felt like it was ‘Rob Thomas and band’ as opposed to Matchbox 20. He always seemed to be the main focus of the group (except from Kyle Cook occasionally) and they could have just have easily been a backing band, which is rather sad, seeing as Matchbox 20 spawned all of their careers, so it would be nasty for him to just take over and become the more important figure!

Overall though, despite mentioning a few qualms and things about the gig, I really enjoyed myself, and enjoyed the songs that they played! In the future I would prefer if they played a smaller venue, but they did well in the SECC.

Oh, and photos to follow! Photos have now been added!

Home –> Los Angeles (Hollywood) –> San Diego –> Ensenada –> San Diego –> Anaheim –> Home

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!

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

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!

In saying the bodywork didn’t last, I mean the bodywork you couldn’t see didn’t last. The outside of the car looked fine - it was all shiny and in fairly good nick. But, apparently, according to the garage that carried out the MOT, the underside had holes or something of that sort and needed welding - something that would cost £700, which you may agree is a fairly extorionate amount for a car that I subsequently sold for £102 on eBay! Maybe I would have been better off with a slightly more reliable car such as a (Toyota) Corolla or some Japanese invention, but in all cases, living by the sea doesn’t do many favours for metalwork. It was a good car at the end of the day though, and maybe if I had been a slightly better/lucky driver at the time then I may have been able to drive on my own in it. Oh well, that’s life…

Finally though, the point in saying this is that I did finally pass my driving test and I can now drive on my own! Yay!