What I Did At The Weekend
Jun. 8th, 2003 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaAs usual, I was faintly confused about what my rapper team was doing on Saturday. For some reason, I thought we were off on the prowl round Oxfordshire scaring harmless villages, but it turned out we were just milling about in Oxford. So there was a certain amount of dancing in Broad Street, and in the Kings Arms. Then we hopped on a boat up the river to the Isis Tavern for an afternoon of dancing, munching food and drinking.
It was nice in a way to be dancing outdoors (horrible though tarmac is to dance on), as it meant we got people stopping to watch us. In a pub you have a captive audience (whether they like it or not); people pausing in their shopping to watch suggests they're genuinely interested.
Of course it meant associating with Morris dancers for the afteroon, but one has to make these sacrifices occasionally :)
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds at the Hammersmith Appollo
It's a quick amble up the tow-path to get home from the Isis, so I managed to get home, changed, and on the train to London in time to make it to Hammersmith with, oooh, minutes to spare for 7pm. Met up with a friend there, and we went and pushed tapas into our faces thus neatly missing the support act...
We made it in time to be comfortably eqiupped with drinks and seats when Mr Cave came on stage. (Seated gig... booo!) First surprise: the Hammersmith Appollo has a good sound system. Really good. The music was loud, but not painful, and everything clear as a bell - you could hear every word of the songs, and even when all hell was breaking loose on stage, you could still pick out the seven (or eight or nine) distinct instruments. (Seven, because there's seven Bad Seeds, eight if NC was playing the piano, and nine because when it says on the album sleeve notes that Mick Harvey plays the guitar and the organ they aren't joking.)
They played relatively few songs of the new album (unusual, I think), and a spread of songs off all other albums. I'm not 100% familiar with the back catalogue, so there were a few I didn't know, but also some old favourites like Do You Love Me? and Red Right Hand. Which leads me on to the second surprise:
They were not playing clones of album tracks. You know, usually when you go to see a band whose stuff you know reasonably well, you can spot most songs in a few chords/notes? No. There were a lot of reworkings, different versions, and variations - Henry Lee, for example, was near-unrecognisable. I really approve of this; after all, if you wanted to hear everything just so, you might as well just sit at home with a beer and turn the album up loud. Although I hadn't thought of it til last night, I think this may relate to my objection to bands using backing tracks - there's absolutely no space for variation on-the-fly.
I like listening to the Bad Seeds in the same way I like listening to the Divine Comedy - they're all very competent musicians in their own right, and each individual performance will be spot-on. Although the Bad Seeds' violinist appears to be amazingly deranged. And I didn't realise Blixa Bargeld had left the Bad Seeds - not sure who the bloke who's replaced him is.
I don't think this gig quite matched the last time I saw them a year or two ago. Being seated in the circle made us feel quite detached from what was happening - we agreed that it was a good gig, but it was a good gig happening over there, while we were sitting over here. It was still very enjoyable though. When they first left the stage, we both thought "huh, that was short". A quick check revealed that at that point (pre-encores) they'd already been playing for over 90 minutes.
And today there was roleplaying in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lathany's Swordsmaster game. Well, first there was failing to catch a train, and having to blag a lift there (sorry!), and arriving just in time to help eat the jam tarts.
The session was impressively full of bad things happening, though - amazingly - mostly not directly to us for a change. Not one assassination attempt...
On the down side, Leonides, the near-mythical mage we've been accompanying for some time, died. This is a bit of a blow to my character; he was a hugely important figure to her people, notwithstanding that he was one of the party's main hopes for the future. So today, we buried a legend.
And then there was getting home (thanksao_lai!), and doing 45 minutes of Pilates exercises, and cooking dinner, and having a bath. And now it's time for bed. G'night.
It was nice in a way to be dancing outdoors (horrible though tarmac is to dance on), as it meant we got people stopping to watch us. In a pub you have a captive audience (whether they like it or not); people pausing in their shopping to watch suggests they're genuinely interested.
Of course it meant associating with Morris dancers for the afteroon, but one has to make these sacrifices occasionally :)
Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds at the Hammersmith Appollo
It's a quick amble up the tow-path to get home from the Isis, so I managed to get home, changed, and on the train to London in time to make it to Hammersmith with, oooh, minutes to spare for 7pm. Met up with a friend there, and we went and pushed tapas into our faces thus neatly missing the support act...
We made it in time to be comfortably eqiupped with drinks and seats when Mr Cave came on stage. (Seated gig... booo!) First surprise: the Hammersmith Appollo has a good sound system. Really good. The music was loud, but not painful, and everything clear as a bell - you could hear every word of the songs, and even when all hell was breaking loose on stage, you could still pick out the seven (or eight or nine) distinct instruments. (Seven, because there's seven Bad Seeds, eight if NC was playing the piano, and nine because when it says on the album sleeve notes that Mick Harvey plays the guitar and the organ they aren't joking.)
They played relatively few songs of the new album (unusual, I think), and a spread of songs off all other albums. I'm not 100% familiar with the back catalogue, so there were a few I didn't know, but also some old favourites like Do You Love Me? and Red Right Hand. Which leads me on to the second surprise:
They were not playing clones of album tracks. You know, usually when you go to see a band whose stuff you know reasonably well, you can spot most songs in a few chords/notes? No. There were a lot of reworkings, different versions, and variations - Henry Lee, for example, was near-unrecognisable. I really approve of this; after all, if you wanted to hear everything just so, you might as well just sit at home with a beer and turn the album up loud. Although I hadn't thought of it til last night, I think this may relate to my objection to bands using backing tracks - there's absolutely no space for variation on-the-fly.
I like listening to the Bad Seeds in the same way I like listening to the Divine Comedy - they're all very competent musicians in their own right, and each individual performance will be spot-on. Although the Bad Seeds' violinist appears to be amazingly deranged. And I didn't realise Blixa Bargeld had left the Bad Seeds - not sure who the bloke who's replaced him is.
I don't think this gig quite matched the last time I saw them a year or two ago. Being seated in the circle made us feel quite detached from what was happening - we agreed that it was a good gig, but it was a good gig happening over there, while we were sitting over here. It was still very enjoyable though. When they first left the stage, we both thought "huh, that was short". A quick check revealed that at that point (pre-encores) they'd already been playing for over 90 minutes.
And today there was roleplaying in
lathany's Swordsmaster game. Well, first there was failing to catch a train, and having to blag a lift there (sorry!), and arriving just in time to help eat the jam tarts.The session was impressively full of bad things happening, though - amazingly - mostly not directly to us for a change. Not one assassination attempt...
On the down side, Leonides, the near-mythical mage we've been accompanying for some time, died. This is a bit of a blow to my character; he was a hugely important figure to her people, notwithstanding that he was one of the party's main hopes for the future. So today, we buried a legend.
And then there was getting home (thanks
ao_lai!), and doing 45 minutes of Pilates exercises, and cooking dinner, and having a bath. And now it's time for bed. G'night.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
G'night
Date: 2003-06-08 04:27 pm (UTC)AAAAHHH! Someone I can ask.
Date: 2003-06-08 04:35 pm (UTC)Bugger
Date: 2003-06-08 08:34 pm (UTC)Re: Bugger
Date: 2003-06-09 01:16 am (UTC)Once I realised, it was a bit late as I hadn't booked seats on the boat for random hangers-on.
Re: AAAAHHH! Someone I can ask.
Date: 2003-06-09 01:21 am (UTC)It's just an exercise system, in the same way that yoga is. Suppose to be very gentle on the body, and very good for improving posture, helping bits of you recover after accidents, and strengthen you in such a way that you're less likely to incur damage in the future.
How much of this is sensible scientific theory and how much is new-age wank I'm not sure. I'll report results after I've been to a few more classes :)
(And re hand-washing - it seems that against all probablity it's pronounced "Pe-la-tees". Someone's surname, I think.)
Re: Bugger
Date: 2003-06-09 05:54 am (UTC)Even without the boat trip. Instead I had to go and buy a copy of Mastering Perl/Tk at Borders.
Ooh
Date: 2003-06-09 06:16 am (UTC)Re: AAAAHHH! Someone I can ask.
Date: 2003-06-09 06:22 am (UTC)Life was so much nicer when massage was the preferred New Age therapy.