Posts

soundwave - aka The Sisters Gig

the sisters gig^H^Hsoundwave

We haven't bothered with the heat and crowds of a festival in years, but Sisters of Mercy were only playing at Soundwave - we'd bought Soundwave Revolutions tickets on the same basis, before it got cancelled...

Annoyingly we were both feeling shithouse on the day, so decided to cut a few acts and just go later in the day. We did catch Marilyn Manson and, thanks to last-minute schedule changes, Wednesday 13 - who are heaps of fun.

Honestly though, it was all about Sisters of Mercy. Up against some big headlines on the main stages, it ended up being a pretty committed crowd that turned out for Sisters. Despite the too-short festival timeslot, they got in a good set list:

  1. Temple of Love
  2. Ribbons
  3. Alice
  4. Crash and Burn
  5. Doctor Jeep / Detonation Boulevard
  6. This Corrosion
  7. Summer
  8. Lucretia My Reflection
  9. Vision Thing
  10. More

sisters of mercy

Temple of Love was a great big anthem sing-along ;) While I'd have loved to see some tracks off First and Last and Always, you can't have everything. The big finish of Vision Thing and More was great - they went off!

sisters of mercy

As a massive bonus to the day, we ran into two different friends who were unexpectedly back in Sydney! Hurrah for chance meetings :)

Labels:

around the traps

roger waters, the wall

You know you're in for a hell of a show: it opens with a plane flying over your head, crashing into the stage in a fireball... then the fireworks kick in...

starting with a bang

...then the glorious opening chords of The Wall pulverise the room.

I'd wanted to see The Wall live for over 20 years - ever since I saw footage of The Wall - Live In Berlin. It wasn't a hard decision to pony up and be there when it came to town:

The Wall ticket

... even if I did wonder if 20 years of expectation could possibly be met.

It was amazing. Rock and roll theatre, spectacle, opera... the story of Pink brought to life.

hey, teacher

The Schoolmaster was creepier than I expected - fluctuations in the balloon inflation make the face gurn into the grotesque.

a fleeting glimpse

Comfortably Numb was a knockout. But then so were Bring The Boys Back Home, Run Like Hell, The Show Must Go On and of course Another Brick In The Wall. And every other song...

the show must go on

tear down the wall

If you get the chance to go - do it. My only regret is I didn't try for the $400 tickets right up front.

Labels:

around the traps

around the traps

street art screen savers for kindle

We bought Kindles a while back; and while the default set of wallpapers probably appeals to someone, personally I'm not into the "slightly creepy images of dead authors" aesthetic. So, I created my own set using photos I've taken of street art in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Thumbnail mosaic of some of the wallpapers - click through for full set on Flickr

These are free to download and use if you share my "australian stickers and graffiti on your kindle" aesthetic - I'll admit this might be a niche market :) They're available separately on Flickr or you can download the whole lot (17mb zip).

To use these you need to jailbreak your Kindle and then install the screensaver hack. The trickiest bit is working out precisely which version Kindle you have so you know which files to use (go by the serial number). Note that once you copy new screen saver images onto your Kindle, you need to restart the Kindle before they'll start showing up (home, menu - settings, menu - restart).

2011 mix tape

Once again I will stubbornly call it a mix tape, even though no actual tapes were harmed in the making of this entirely digital playlist.

The yearly play list is simply a set of songs which have been on high rotation or were just the song of the moment. I used to try to reorder it to make a coherent play list but frankly they're always a grab bag, so I just leave them in the order I add them. Enjoy!

2011 Mix Tape by h on Grooveshark

(you can play it on grooveshark if the embed's not working)

Mostly for my own record, this is how these tracks came to be part of the list...

  1. Lightbringer - Covenant (inspired simply by the release of the album)
  2. Derezzed - Daft Punk
  3. TRON Legacy (End Titles) - Daft Punk (because TRON Legacy redefined what cyberspace looks like, in the general psyche - it was scrolling green text for years after The Matrix; now it's blue neon. Also I listened to the sountrack constantly during an Atlassian FedEx, during which I made a Tron theme for Confluence... yes, Tronfluence! ...it's unusable for any length of time but damn it looks cool.)
  4. Welcome Home, Son - Radical Face (forever associated with Uli Steck climbing the north face of the Eiger)
  5. The Loyal - Tiger Lou (a friend played this while were hanging out at her place and the music felt instantly familiar, ultimately becoming some of my most-played music of the year)
  6. The Answer - U.N.K.L.E.
  7. Reign - U.N.K.L.E. (because seeing them live with strings at the sydney opera house blew my socks off... and you'd better believe the pizzicato part of this song was a highlight)
  8. Oh My Brother - Mr. Percival. Note - annoyingly not available to include in the playlist, guess you'll have to go check out the albums yourselves ;) (inspired by Mr Percival singing it during a secret gig I was lucky enough to attend)
  9. Hell - Squirrel Nut Zippers (another track picked up along with Tiger Lou - yes, the playlist at our gatherings can vary a tad!)
  10. Jumping Someone Else's Train - The Cure
  11. All Cats Are Grey - The Cure (back to the Opera House! ...and while UNKLE was awesome, Reflections was a religious experience)
  12. Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye (this is probably on every other playlist for 2011, what a ripper of a track...)
  13. Disappear Here - Hybrid (because it brings to mind the sense of flight from this video)
  14. Jilly's on Smack - Primus (I never saw Primus back in the day and only properly got into their back catalogue in the past couple of years. Anyway we saw them live and they played this ahead of the album's release.)
  15. Insect/Suspect - Pigface (Purely random - this came up in the car with the ipod on shuffle, and became my song of the moment. Something about the rhythm, I think.)

I've no idea if anyone else will like a single track off this. Well, apart from the Gotye, which echoed over the waters as we were going to sleep in the tent on Cockatoo Island on New Year's Eve. Pretty clearly that one's going around :)

Labels: , ,

search