music

it was our daughter’s first proper concert too.  what a way to start a life of concert going

you can listen to his latest album here

last date on the Plastic Beach tour tonight. 

was excellent

both wonderful and frightening

phil collins is still very popular here.  phil collins, a couple of poisonous spiders and cockroaches are the only things i find annoying about new zealand.  all are bearable.  just about

this cd was in our hire car and it was fab.  not sure what all the tracks were, but a few we knew and loved and a few we didn’t and loved.  was a shame to give it back with the car !

two friends took jane and i to see a concert by national superstar (world famous in new zealand) Dave Dobbyn.  He was playing an acoustic gig in Auckland Cathedral with the Dukes.  All excellent stuff.

they were excellent and plenty loud enough (concerts do seem to be a lot louder over here – probably to do with all the lovely clean air)

this last picture is a visual representation on the volume and feedback

i went to see the Phoenix Foundation on Friday evening with my lovely wife jane ? do you know them ?  they are excellent.

rock my amadeus

dreadful pictures, but great gig with bnug

i went to see the pixies in auckland last night.  they were TOTALLY excellent

i’ll not go on about how good they were cuz that’s a bit boring.

but they were really fantastic.  so there.

i went to the fantastic laneways festival yesterday.  it’s the first time the festival has visited Auckland and there were a number of teething troubles.  but the bands made it

the venue was a pay and display carpark in the centre of town.  at least it didn’t get muddy in the rain

the dirty three, the phoenix foundation and surf city were my favourites

but the absolute bestest were echo and the bunnymen (despite the sounds being messed up so the keyboard was waaaay too loud). 

the title of this post refers to some lovely kiwi beer called Mac’s Gold which jane bought me today and is a nice echo and the bunnymen reference too.

i finally got to see jarvis cocker in concert on monday night.  i missed him by a day in both wellington and auckland due to being in the other place on the other night.

so when i discovered he was playing in Sydney 2 minutes walk from my hotel i was excited.  but gutted when it was sold out

but luckily i got a return ticket from the box office and enjoyed a marvellous evening.  and was transported back to the time when i was a vague aquaintance of the great man in sheffield.  in fact i once gave him a demo tape, which he lost, but apologised and said he had been looking forward to hearing my song ‘the death of bernie winters’

both of us from sheffield to sydney.  slightly different routes.  but there you go

i used to be a goth, a long time ago.  and i loved the sisters of mercy.  and i think i had a rather funky metal necklace which looked a bit like this too.  small world.

i hadn’t realised there was actually a number of bjorn agains each with a different ‘cast’ of musicians/performers

on
our way home we moved out of the way to let a golf trolley through.  it
contained the keyboard player who was speaking with a broad northern
accent.  Rather different from the swenglish (swedish-english) used
during the performance !

full set of pictures here (click on the little icon to the bottom left of the pictures to watch as a bigger slide show

stepping round the back to get a better view kezia noticed this lady was wearing one of the song sheets

this was the main stage which was solar powered and about the size of our garden shed.  although our garden shed doesn’t have grass on the roof

there were all sorts of sensible eco-friendly things like this stick for putting (used) large cups on.  they also had eco toilets which involved a sprinkle of sawdust rather than a flush.  the girls thought they were yucky but quiet (if you didn’t listen to the sound of ‘things’ dropping on to the pits below)

the girls did some felting, which was interesting.  this wool comes from merino sheep and was lovely

here are a few old records used for recycling, which summed up the festival quite nicely i think

there was a guided tour to go forraging in the local woods in the afternoon encouraging people to go and find their own dinner in the woods.  the girls didn’t fancy that much so we went crocheting instead.  here’s my effort which is basically a load of knots as far as i can see.  the girls’ efforts were much better than mine