Carlski's Gig Blog: Also Featuring Arbitrary Strangeness!

Blaze Bayley - 07/06/08

2008-06-08T00:37:00.002+01:00

Blaze Bayley was of course the frontman of legendary brit metal band Wolfsbane and also Iron Maiden (Between 1995-1999) and He is back with his new solo album: "The Man That Would Not Die"

Blaze's popularity seems to have waned over the last few years as there were probably only around 150-175 people in attendance tonight,

However for those who came they were treated to a high octane metal fest! I thought he was brilliant!

Along with songs from his solo albums he played "Futureal", "Virus" and "Lord Of The Flies" from his time in Iron Maiden, they were great versions and his voice really is quite distinctive although his moves are slowly matching those of fellow brummie Ozzy! All in all, a brilliant gig!

That's it for now! The next gig is Queensryche next week, which also has had an unfortunate lack of sales! See you then!

Joe Satriani & Paul Gilbert - 15/05/08

2008-05-29T22:17:00.000+01:00

Joe Satriani at Manchester Apollo, with Paul Gilbert, so let's start with Mr. Gilberto. He started off in Mr. Big in the late 1980's and his gimmick was of course playing guitars with Makita cordless drills!

Gilberto played mainly songs from his new CD: "Silence Followed By a Deafening Roar" which other than his Mr. Big albums are the only one i've got, but his playing was magnificent very, very, close to good ol' Joe himself!

Gilberto finished with Mr. Big's "The Electric Drill Song" which ended up being the only song with singing, and also featured the drill moment! There was also a bit of a Jimmy Page style violin bowing! Overall great stuff!

The crowd pretty much loved Gilberto and even gave him a standing ovation, pretty good for a support act! So Joe had a lot to live up to!

Joe had as usual, Jeff Campitelli on drums, Galen Henson on rhythm guitar and the return of the BASSmaster: Stu Hamm! So probably his best ever backing band!

Joe, not surprisingly played 7 out of the 10 songs on his new album: "Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musteron of Rock", which is probably his finest album in years!

Joe also played many of his claasic older songs, finishing off with the brilliant sing along to the guitar part: "Crowd chant" The audience went suitably ape-shit! Anyone who thinks Satriani tracks are just widdly diddly guitar shit with no tunes, were proven wrong by such catchy numbers as "Always You, Always Me", "Summer Song" and "Flying In a Blue Dream".

A special mention goes out to Stu Hamm for possibly the best bass guitaring heard since Geddy Lee and Rush! At first I though every one was booing him, but it turns out they were "Stu"ing him - Awesome!

Blaze Bayley is next at Rock Of Ages! on the 7th June. Also need a ticket for Paul Gilbert at Rios in November!

Robert Plant/Alison Krauss - 07/05/08

2008-05-10T12:03:00.002+01:00

Had terrible cold, didn't feel well so didn't end up going :-( Mam and Dad enjoyed the show though! Apparently it was really good! Hopefully will be back in action for guitar fret wankery from Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert next week!

3 Inches Of Blood - 02/05/08

2008-05-03T00:09:00.005+01:00

Yes, Mr. Somebodyelse, Rios is now indeed in Leeds and not Bradford! I also agree that Facebook sucks serious ass! I'm very close to deleting my account as it's the most annoying f*%ked-up shit on t'interweb! Anyway let's talk about Vancouver, Canada's very own, 3 Inches Of Blood - You would think that they were a Scandinavian battle metal if you didn't know any better and they frakkin' rock big time!

Last week we only saw the last two songs from the 3"ers, this week we got to see the whole show, but still with crazy shit going on! 3" had a small but devoted crowd gathered in Leeds on Friday for an excellent set of rowdy battle metal anthems, Cam Pipes was in good form with his "Evil" Rob Halford inpressions, awesome!

THe crowd were a set of complete nutters with one of the craziest circle pits i've seen in a long while, this was also the cause of Friday's comedy!

Honk decided that at 50 years old, you are still young enough to have a mosh in the circle pit, this was of course after several pints too many... After running out of the pit looking somewhat green, he proceeded to spew all over my arm and then the floor, before being booted out by the bouncers! At this point Brian, came over wondering what had happened to Honk, and slipped on his back straight into the pool of vom! It was classic!

So this was two strange gigs in a row for Honk Stewart, pissing off half way through last weeks, and then getting chucked out of this one! God knows what will happen next....

The next gig is a complete change of pace - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss at the Manchester Apollo on Wednesday, see you after then!

Defenders Of The Faith - 25/04/08

2008-04-26T22:13:00.006+01:00

Comedy day out this! After an afternoon of swilling pints in various Manchester hostelries, we got into the Manchester Academy at about 6:50, things went wrong instantly, JB's current favourites 3 Inches Of Blood, had come on immensely early, and we only saw the last two songs, which were very good! This pissed JB off immediately!

The next band up was Devildriver, who were alright, but not brilliant! Honk seemed to like them, but after an incident with a plastic sword, he decided enough was enough and lobbed his pint and pissed off! We were now one down....

The next band up was Opeth which were the band I was most looking forward to, and they were, well disappointing to say the least, they didn't get good until half way through the second to last song. They sounded constantly out of tune and frontman Mikael Akerfeldt appeared to have had several pints too many before the show! At this point JB decided that they were shit and that he was off outside for a fag. Unfortunately they would let him back in...

The final band was Arch Enemy, and there was just myself and Junior left to watch them. After a disappointing night, Arch Enemy saved the day! They fu@kin' ruled, they were tight fast and aggressive! Front woman, Angela Gossow had incredible stage presence and insanely evil voice, think the demon voice from The Exorcist!!! Brilliant!

The next gig is this coming Friday at Leeds Rios! 3 Inches Of Blood's own headlining show. More after.

Nightwish - 04/04/08

2008-04-20T01:19:00.012+01:00

The first proper gig of the year! Also the first blog entry of 2008, and its been a while coming hasn't it! So onto Nightwish at the Manchester Apollo. I was very much looking forward to this one as it was the first gig of theirs that i had seen with the new singer - Anette Olzon, who has a totally different presence and voice than their old singer Tarja Turunen.

So not suprisingly given the differing range of Anette's voice, the band stuck mainly to songs from last years "Dark Passion Play" album, with a smattering of old tunes thrown in for good measure.

Unfortunately the soundman should be shot, as the sound was terrible to begin with and not very loud at all throughout the whole show! However the bands performance was very good! Luckily Nightwish are the main headliners at this years 3 day Bloodstock Open Air Metal Festival, where I can re-evalue them. It was still a lot of fun though!

Next up in the world of metal is the "Metal Hammer - Defenders Of The Faith Tour" that will thunder through Manchester Academy next Friday (25/04/08) which will be reported on soon after! See you then!

Top 3 Gigs Of The Year - 2007

2007-12-31T14:35:00.000Z

Not really much competition here to be honest :-)

Number: 3

Rush - Manchester - 14/10/07

Number: 2

Rush - Sheffield - 06/10/07

and finally (and not suprisingly!):

Number: 1

Rush - Birmingham - 12/10/07

Surprised! Thought not, nuff said! Let's see what nest year has to offer! See you soon, hope you have a happy new year!!

Albums Of The Year - 2007

2007-12-31T13:38:00.000Z

Well, its been a while, since i've bothered to write anything here! Mainly due to the overdose of Rush! But hey i am back with the Top 5 albums of the year! The reason it is not 10 is that this year there was an above average number of good albums so to find 5 outstanding was easier than trying to figure out ten!

So here We go!

Number: 5

Jordan Rudess - The Road Home

An album featuring covers of 70's Progressive Rock classics from bands such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis, King Crimson and Yes! Also featuring one brand new Jordan track!

For those who don't know, Jordan Rudess is the keyboard player for Dream Theater and this is his 5th solo album! Cracking!

Number: 4

Marillion - Somewhere Else

Marillion's 14th album, is the best since 1997's "This Strange Engine". they have shifted their sound, so this album is probably more like Radiohead mixed with Coldplay, rather than the proggy style of old! A great listen though!

Number: 3

Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet

Fantastic Nu-Prog album! Another album that narrowly missed the five, was "Blackfield II" by Blackfield which is a Porcupine Tree spin-off band.

Again mostly mellow sounds on this! The third song "Anesthetise" features Rush's Alex Lifeson on lead guitar!

Number: 2

Rush - Snakes & Arrows

Wot, not number one! what's wrong with the world! Well I thought this would easily be the album of the year and it was till June, but then things changed!

"Snakes & Arrows" is Rush's best album for nigh on 18 years, certainly the best since 1989's "Presto" album. Just great proggy rock!

It won Classic Rock Magazine's album of the year! And they were also band of the year in the readers poll, too! Brilliant, nearly the very best of the year, until it was tipped by:

Number: 1

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos

Just magnificent! This is what I said at the time of release:

"This is extremely Progtastic! What a fantastic album, I'd recommend it to any fan of Prog Rock/Metal. If you like Rush, Tool, Porcupine Tree, Yes or Pink Floyd, you'll love it! It features all your favourite prog stuff: 16 minute tracks, over the top keyboards, widdly solos everthing! One song sounds a bit too much like Muse, but its still good.. Rock on :-)"

It just is top notch in every way! The best guitar and keyboard performances of the year! Drumming just slightly less impressive than Neil Peart (Rush) at his best, but great stuff. Fabulous! It will take a lot to beat this next year. It could well be the metal release of the decade (so far!)

End Of Rush Week!

2007-10-20T18:40:00.000+01:00

It is now finally the end of Rush week! Which was a blast! So to wrap up things on this subject, here are a few video clips (all the fireworky bits!) I filmed at the Birmingham show! Next gig will be Heaven & Hell in November - see you then!

Rush - 14/10/07

2007-10-20T16:24:00.000+01:00

Sunday brought with it the final Rush gig at Manchester MEN Arena, and this was the one where we were sat the furthest back from the stage! However this seemed to produce some of the best photos!

None suprisingly the setlist was the same as the other two nights! Geddy had got his voice back and there were no mistakes tonight! (there was a false early trigger of sampled backing vocals at Brum!)and as usual a Manchester crowd is a bit more lively than those southern lot!

Here is a picture of the Rush Posse! From left to right: Honk, Myself and Seymour! This pic was taken at the finest Wetherspoons pub of them all - The Moon Under The Water in rainy ol' Manchester! (although it was amazingly dry that day!) Where much alcohol was quaffed before the gig!

And for the last time, some lovely piccies from Manchester!

Rush - 12/10/07

2007-10-20T16:13:00.000+01:00

2nd Rush gig: Birmingham NEC - This gig was much the same as Sheffield, i.e same set list entirely, but we were on the 4th row from front this time! Crowd a bit more subdued than Sheffield, Geddy's voice faultered a few times, seemed to have a bit of a cold.

Back at the Hotel, I met Pierre Lamoureux (Rush's film-maker and live DVD director) at the Bar - he was a very nice bloke, who said he would send me some free Rush stuff! He also bought me a few pints on the band!

Here are some more photos from the Birmingham gig. Next up is the final Rush gig in Manchester!

Rush - 06/10/07 (Part 3)

2007-10-10T00:35:00.000+01:00

Here are some more images from the Sheffield gig - these belong to a guy from one of the Rush online forums, but if you look closely at the pic above you can see he was stood about 2 rows behind me, as you can see the back of my head! (You can also see the back of my sister's head too - she's taking the photo!) So due to me inadvertantly starring in his pix, i'm knicking them :-)

Rush - 06/10/07 (Part 2)

2007-10-09T00:05:00.000+01:00

The highlight of the second half of the show was "Tom Sawyer" with a highly amusing special "South Park" video intro! (The South Park guys are big Rush fans!)

The pictures accompanying this blog entry are courtesy of Sarah, as was the video clip above!

The second half of the show had them beating Tool's light show, (which they in turn had nicked from Rush anyway!) by having some pyro and flame units to out do them by! Green lasers through smoke are always cool!

Also this tour they had chicken rotisseries behind Geddy to make up for him having no speakers stacks! A couple of chefs would pop out throughout the night to tend to the chickens!

The second half of the show mainly showcased songs from their latest album "Snakes & Arrows" which went down suprisingly well. They then encored with "One Little Victory" (major flameage!)"A Passage To Bangkok" and "YYZ"!

The sound throughout the night was top notch, much better than on the "R30 tour" Kudos to the sound engineering guys! I am now looking forward to doing it all again on Friday at the NEC in Birmingham, see you after show 2!

Rush - 06/10/07 (Part 1)

2007-10-08T23:55:00.000+01:00

The first gig of the three Rush events was on Saturday at Hallam FM Arena, Sheffield - Rush have a big history in Sheffield (of sorts!) It was 30 years ago in 1977 when they played their first ever gig outside of North America at Sheffield City Hall

Their next visit to Sheffield (also at the City Hall) was in 1980 on the "Permanent Waves Tour" then here at Arena on the 10th April 1992, which was my first ever Rush gig!

So, onwards 15 years and a triumphant return to Yorkshire from the boys (or maybe "old farts") from Toronto, Canada, for what could be the gig of not just this year, but for many years to come!

As ever they provided pretty good value for 45 quid! A just under 3 hour show! Starting off where they left off 3 years ago with "Limelight" they blasted through a first half of some cracking old classics, some that they had never played live before!

Highlight for me in the first half of the show was "Mission" from 1987's "Hold Your Fire" Album! It's in my top ten ever songs and I had only seen Rush tribute band "2112" perform it before at the New Roscoe in Leeds. It was sublime!

Also in the first half was "Circumstances" from 1978 (not played since 1980, so Honk tells me) and also "The Main Monkey Business" which had some highly amusing footage of 30's and 40's films of various Monkeys apeing around!! Awesome! (Pictures courtesy of www.t-n-m-s.com)

Rush Week!

2007-10-06T13:00:00.000+01:00

This week is Rush week - Starting today thru next Sunday! The first review and piccies (and maybe a vid!) coming soon! Watch this space!
BTW: This was composed on a new iPod Touch, cool or what!

Tool - 23/08/07

2007-08-24T19:54:00.000+01:00

If there was a prize for how many lasers, lights and potted plants you could get in the Manchester Apollo - then Tool would win hands down.

Here are a couple of shots sourced via google images as, as per normal with Tool, and growing in popularity with all sorts, cameras and phones were banned from the venue.

Anyway, Tool were scarily awesome yet again, with ridiculously loud pummeling riffs and a spectacularly fantastic light show! Maynard was on strangely bizzare form even holding up score cards, like ice skating, except rating the drum solo!

Due to the no photos rule here are some strangely comical promo piccies from the 10,000 Days album:

All in all, yet another fantastic gig! 9/10!

Next up is a quite a gap, followed by Rush week in October!

Scorpions - 29/07/07

2007-07-30T10:15:00.000+01:00

Scorps at Manchester Apollo. Support from MSG (Michael Schenker Group). Good to see ol'Metal Mickey pissed as a fart as usual, he managed 3 songs before falling over and getting booed off! Ace!

The Scorps then appeared to play the crowd 2+ hours of German "Metaalll!!" With ex guitarist Uli Jon Roth with them to do a few oldies, the crowd got a very mixed bag of classic Scorps tuneage!

They played tracks from nearly all their album except the 3 really shitty 90's albums!

THe highlights being "The Zoo", "Blackout" and a couple of "newies" Some fans kept shouting for Herman "The German" during the drum solo not realising that Herman had left the band and that new drummer James Kottak is neither called Herman, nor is he German!

For encore it was lighters or phones out for the best of the Scorpions ballads - "Still Loving You" and of course the classic "Wind Of Change". For a big sing along finish, it was time to "Rock You Like a Hurricane"! Awesome!

Movie: The Fountain - Dir: Darren Aronofsky

2007-07-25T23:47:00.001+01:00

The Fountain is a really f*kin' storming movie! The film is a strange mix of "Apocalypto" meets "2001: A Space Odyssey" It basically features Hugh Jackman (superb performance!) searching for the "Tree of Life" in the new world in 1500 - searching for a cure for his wife's (played by Rachel Weisz) cancer in 2007, and flying around in a spherical spaceship with only a tree (tree of life??) for company in 2500! Yes its pretty damn weird, but pretty damn good! The story is well paced, the photography and editing excellent and the score stirring and moving at the same time! There's also a bit of action and people getting speared and whacked over the head for people who like that shit also :-)

If you have a PlayStation 3 or Blu-Ray Disc Player. The Blu-Ray Disc has way more features than the standard DVD and an absolutely fabulous picture to boot! It has the same 1 hour documentary and deleted scenes, but has an extra 40 mins of VFX and storyboarding stuff thats pretty interesting too! The one let down is no commentary track unlike Darren Aronofsky's previous two movies "Pi" and "Requiem For A Dream"

Basically a good film for Sci-fi fan everywhere! 9.5/10!

Ozzy Osbourne - 06/07/07

2007-07-11T20:50:00.000+01:00

Moving on to Friday evening now, and Ozzy's gig at the NIA! The first support band was "Headspace" a band fronted by Ozzy's keyboardist Adam (Son of Rick!)Wakeman, but we missed them by getting to the venue late!

The main support was "Black Label Society" fronted by Ozzy's guitarist Zakk Wylde!

Zakk played roughly 50 mins of fairly firey metal, not heard much before, but was v. enjoyable. Will probably have to check out some BLS albums!

Then it was time for the Prince Of Darkness himself: He came on stage to his usual comedy video which included him nicking Heather Mills' false leg!

Ozzy ran though 13 of his greatest hits, his voice and himself were in suprisingly good form!

Ozzy did his usual throwing copious buckets of water over the front few rows, and did his trademark comedy banter of "Show me your f*-king hands" and "I love you all!"
All in all a great gig!!

Ozzy Osbourne Day! - 06/07/07

2007-07-11T08:41:00.000+01:00

Friday 7th July will forever be known as "Ozzy Osbourne Day" in the fair city of Birmingham, for on this day the world's favourite "Brummie" was awarded the first star on the "Birmingham Walk of Fame"!

Around 2000 screaming lunatics turned up in Centenary Square, to watch events unfold!

Th event was host by some useless DJ from the local radio station, and was mercilessly heckled throughout!

The lord mayor then went on about all of Ozzy's achievements, such as staying alive this long, to cries of "f*-k off" from the crowd!

Ozzy was then give a replica of the "star" and the day after the real star was placed in the pavement on Broad Street. Ozzy mumbled a few unintelligible words mentioning something about "Birmingham becoming a bit posh"!

Ozzy Osbourne Day! (Press) - 07/07/07

2007-07-08T20:59:00.000+01:00

As Ozzy is the world's most famous "brummie". The local press were full of Ozzyness!

Above is Friday and Saturdays "Birmingham Mail" notice on Saturdays frontpage photo, he is holding a copy of the Friday edition!

Photo from "The Birmingham Post"

The gig review from "The Birmingham Post"

Feature article from "The Birmingham Post"

Finally cartoon from "The Birmingham Post"

Blackmore's Night - 12/06/07

2007-06-15T15:39:00.000+01:00

When Honk and myself went to see Deep Purple in 2005, they sucked big time! Mainly due to the lack of one Ritchie Blackmore, who of course left in 1993. Ritchie, one of the world's greatest ever guitar riffmeisters retired into his castle and decided to make "Renaissance Music" with his new girlfriend Candice Night. Hence the formation of Blackmore's Night!

These day ol'Ritchie only plays places like castles and towns and cities with great history - So York Grand Opera house was right up his street! His support band were a group of traditional musicians from the Czech Republic, who were not very well versed in English, but they were amusing and fun to clap along with!

As usual at a Blackmore's Night gig the first 4 or 5 rows, were full of people dressed in medieval garb! Jesters, and serfs and fat friars and some guys who all looked like Sir Walter Raleigh! Hugely amusing!

Blackmore's Night played songs from all 5 albums, plus a few folkified versions of old Deep Purple numbers. He was on top comedy form all night berating members of his band and passing Mead in silver goblets down into the audience! His guitar playing, as ever was superb! Candice is a pretty good vocalist too! But most people seemed to be there for Ritchie!

After 2 hours of Folk rock, (Fans of Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull would have loved it!) He wandered of stage and the enitre audience went mental, all singing the main riff to Deep Purple's "Black Night"!

There was then a huge cheer as Ritchie came back on stage with his signature white Fender Strat! And played the opening riff to Black Night. Everyone went nuts as he then played the whole song and then played Rainbow's version of Beethoven's 9th in a squealy super solo, then went into the opening riff of the Purp's "Woman (From Tokyo".

Just as we thought it couldn't get any better, the opening and NEVER equalled riff to "Smoke On The Water" broke out and everyone went crazy! but it was to be the last song as the stage manager had to come on stage and try and make everyone leave, saying the band had already played 15 minutes past a strict curfew of 11pm!

To sum it up it was an incredible gig! Next one is the legendary Ozzy Osbourne!

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos

2007-06-04T16:55:00.001+01:00

This is extremely Progtastic! What a fantastic album, I'd recommend it to any fan of Prog Rock/Metal. If you like Rush, Tool, Porcupine Tree, Yes or Pink Floyd, you'll love it! It features all your favourite prog stuff: 16 minute tracks, over the top keyboards, widdly solos everthing! One song sounds a bit too much like Muse, but its still good.. Rock on :-)

Magnum - 25/05/07

2007-05-26T18:55:00.000+01:00

At Leeds Rios, not Bradford as it says above. Bradford Rios is now defunct and has moved to Leeds into a bigger venue, capacity of 1680 instead of 600! Anyway Magnum is our very first visit to Rios new home in Leeds!

The venue was not as big as we thought it would be due to Rios having 3 floors, so in fact it was probably not that much bigger than the old Rios.

Anyway, Magnum came and conquered... They were the best band I've seen this year.. well, maybe except for Journey! They played half of their new album "Princess Alice And The Broken Arrow" plus mainly songs off of the classic albums: "Chase The Dragon", "On A Storyteller's Night" and "Vigilante"

After nearly 2 hours of Rock, we all went home fully rocked out! The next gig maybe or maybe not the Sunday of the Download Festival - also known as "Iron Maiden" day!

The Who - 23/05/07- "We are not the Arctic Monkeys!"

2007-05-24T18:41:00.000+01:00

The Who at Sheffield Arena! This was their first tour since last year's Leeds Uni and Harewood House come back. As they bounded onto the stage Pete's first words to introduce the first song was: "We are not the Arctic Monkeys!"

Tonight they played a load of new songs from their recent "Endless Wire" CD, and very good they were too!

They also played one totally new song called "Real Good Looking Boy" about Elvis which was excellent and cunningly only available on their new "The Who - Best Of 1964-2007" out 7th June - so need to buy CD of 19 previously owned tracks to get this one new song :-(

Pete was on top comedy form with his inbetween track comments - particularly funny were more comedy quips about the Arctic Monkeys! e.g "If we sell as many copies as them, it'll be a fucking miracle" and "Things were different in our days, but then they are only 12 and a half"

Overall it was a very good gig - the audience seemed a little quiet, but thats nowt new for Hallam FM Arena! It wasn't sold out either, but they are playing a big outdoor show at KC Stadium in Hull on Saturday, which may be more popular!

The Who are releasing this show, along with all the other shows on this tour on DVD and CD via their website - may invest in a copy of last nights it was good!

Next gig is Magnum on Friday, more then!

Carlski, Honk and Patrick Stewart!

2007-05-18T16:13:00.000+01:00

There's no real explanation needed for this one - I don't think!

Cat's Like Apple Macs!.....

2007-05-17T14:38:00.000+01:00

...because, they are nice and warm!!!!

Snakes & Arrows - Billboard Chart Position + Other Factoids!

2007-05-10T19:01:00.000+01:00

And finally, the U.S Billboard Top 200 chart position for Rush's Snakes & Arrows: A mighty number: 3. That's their joint second highest chart placing in the U.S, with only 1993's Counterparts beating it! (That album debuted at number: 2)

Rush have currently sold at least 45 million albums worldwide and have 23 U.S Gold Discs - only bettered by The Beatles (42), The Rolling Stones (39), Kiss (24), and are joint with Aerosmith! The U.K tally is 13 Gold or Silver Awards (which is still good by anyone's standard!)

Snakes & Arrows - Hits The Chart! (Updated)

2007-05-08T21:12:00.000+01:00

Here's this weeks Top 40 Rock Chart, again courtesy of the lovely Beeb! I wonder whose number 1? :-)!!

Good to see Rush doing quite well in the BBC Radio 1 Official Album Chart - straight in at no:13, that's Rush's best appearance since 1992, when "Roll The Bones" made the Top Ten. But miles better than the no:38 peak of "Vapor Trails" from 2002!
Roll on October and the tour :-)

Snakes & Arrows - Review!

2007-05-03T18:01:00.000+01:00

I have listened to it now about 5 or 6 times, so I believe I have ingested enough of it to give a proper review!

Firstly, the production is so much better than on their last album "Vapor Trails", and also the consistancy of the songs is much better over all, generally speaking they are much better than any on VT.

The album starts of a little weakly with "Far Cry", which is a pretty standard Rush tune, nothing particularly special. "Armor And Sword", follows and is a little better, nice acoustic guitar reminicent of "Presto", but still a bit over long. "Workin' Them Angels" is the next track, and is superb, good both musically and lyrically, same can be said of the next track "The Larger Bowl".

Spindrift is the first 10/10 track, it sounds like classic Rush should, stunning! "The Main Monkey Business" is the first instrumental, and is excellent, more brilliant guitaring from Lerxt! "The Way The Wind Blows" is next and is a little less good than the last 2 tracks.

"Hope" is next and is a 2 minute "12 string acoustic guitar" workout, brilliant, but rather pointless, could be any good guitarist, not very Rush sounding!

"Faithless", "Bravest Face" and "Good News First" are all 10/10 new Rush Classics, espesially like the orchestral arrangement on "Faithless".

"Malignant Narcissism" is the 3rd and last instrumental, 2 minutes of funkyness, quite groovy. The name comes from the film "Team America: World Police" and features a sample from said movie. Neil Peart, the drummer is good friends with Matt Stone (one of the co-creators of Team America) so permission for the clip would have been easily come by!

"We Hold On" is the last track and is another straight ahead rocker! All in all, a great album: 9/10

But not everyone thinks this way: Check out this review from an "alledged Rush fan": http://jamesgibbon.com/weblog/pivot/entry.php?id=76/

I definately do not agree with the Geddy Lee, quote:"warbles atonally over the music like an amateur improvising while hearing it for the first time." bit,

Or the "In places, in the remaining songs, there are some interesting musical moments - but for the most part, these songs have been crucified by the most half-baked, awkward, embarrassing vocal performance you're likely to hear this side of hymn practice at a special needs school."

And certainly not: "Ah well. Even without the Geddy Lee Cringe Factor™, this would be at best a below-average post grunge rock record that sparkles rarely and mostly falls flat. As it is, it's a dog."

It's far from a dog, so maybe this guy should go and listen to some Arctic Monkeys or other such shite!! I sincerely hope he ain't sitting next to me come the tour!!

Rush - Snakes & Arrows

2007-04-28T17:15:00.000+01:00

Damn, thought I might have had this through the post today! Pesky Play.com. Hopefully should still have it by release day (Monday) :-) Hopefully review will be up sometime afterwards. I have managed to resist listening to any samples on t'internet, so it will be totally fresh to me!

Rush: Tour 2007 - Can't Wait!

2007-04-03T15:22:00.000+01:00

Rush have announced their 2007 tour! As usual, as a slightly mad Rush fan, I am going to multiple dates! Saturday 6th October - Sheffield Arena, Friday 12th November - Birmingham NEC, and also Sunday 14th October - Manchester MEN Arena. Cannot wait!!!

Dolly Parton - 24/03/07

2007-04-03T15:17:00.000+01:00

As you may have guessed I am not the world's no:1 Dolly Parton fan, but my Dad is! We counted his Dolly albums and there were over 40! Anyway I accompanied my Dad to the above Dolly gig at Sheffield Arena, and was pleasantly suprised! She was great, I suppose after listening to Dolly albums for years, I had assimilated all the songs, as I knew every one of them! She put on a great show, and she had as much energy as someone 30 years younger! Amazing really!

Anyway there are no piccies, as cameras and even mobile phones were not allowed in the venue! There was a taped announcement saying "Please return cameras and phone back to your car"!!!

Mastodon - 12/03/07

2007-04-03T15:15:00.000+01:00

On the day of the Mastodon gig, I was feeling at my worst, I very nearly did not go to this one. But had been looking forward to it for quite a long while!

The Corporation in Sheffield is not a fantastic venue either, quite small and odd shaped, so when you push your way to the front, you find there is a lot of space to the left hand side of the stage.

Mastodon played, what was on hindsight a blinding set, it just didn't seem that way, as I was unwell. They played nearly all of the Blood Mountain album, along witha few choice tracks from their other two albums.

My next gig after this was... wait for it Dolly Parton!

Deftones - 09/03/07

2007-04-03T15:10:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, its been a while since i've posted anything here, as I have not been too well. So this is going back a few weeks.

This was quite a good gig considering it was at the Refec (again! The Refec is doing quite well recently in getting some good rock/metal shows!), although it did suffer a tad from the usual bad sound. I went a long to this gig with my friend Michael, who hadn't been to a gig in about 8 years. He enjoyed it very much too.

Deftones played a very mixed set with songs coming from all 5 of their albums. I didn't get in early enough to see the support band play as I had a previous engagement at the Fenton!

Here as ever are a few shots of the band! The crowd was a strange mix of young kids and old rockers!

The new songs are quite mellow, and they were the ones that sounded best, due to the ol' Refec sound!

Next gig was Mastodon at Sheffield Corporation!

Journey - 06/03/07

2007-03-07T02:34:00.000Z

Those familiar with Manchester Apollo will note that row C is the front row, woo! Hence, why even on a phone cam the pics are pretty good, and with no heads in the way!

Journey's support tonight was Danny Vaughn (ex Tyketto, Waysted) who played an all accoustic set, he was excellent.

I was quite pleased we had seats on the left hand side, so I was right in front of Neal Schon, who is one of rocks greatest guitarists! It was also good after Seagal that the audience was not a load of pensioners!

Neal up close! Journey played basically all the hits, saving the best three for last "Don't Stop Believin'", "Anyway You Want It" and "Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart)" ! New singer Jeff Scott Soto was also excellent, much better sounding IMHO than Steve Augeri (the last guy!) but still not as good as Steve Perry (the original guy!), but can't have everything!

At the end of the show I managed to get hold of one of Neal's picks, yeah! Also got the customary t-shirt as well! Excellent gig, quite possibly one going in the top ten of all time! Check the archives for June 2006 and see what I thought of then, the last time they played the Apollo! Next up is definitely Deftones on Friday!

Steven Seagal and Thunderbox - 04/03/07

2007-03-05T12:53:00.000Z

I had the choice of at least 3 gigs to go to on this day! Whilst Garry was at Nine Inch Nails and Emmy was at The Eagles of Death Metal, I chose actor, musician, martial artist, philanthropist (his words NOT mine!) Steven Seagal!!!

Here is the only picture I managed to take (very over-exposed) as security was tight - he is after all a Hollywood star!

When me and Honk arrived at Halifax Victoria Theatre we were shocked to find all Seagal's hardcore fans were "pensioners". Honk thought they had mistaken Steven Seagal for "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (obscure Neil Diamond joke!)

First up was the support "SUPER CHIKAN"! he is a scary old Louisiana bluesman and all his guitars where home made: one out of a ceiling fan and one made of a old tin box and a pool cue for a neck!! Super Chikan played half an hour of "Delta blues" he was very entertaining!!

As the security people (get a job with the yellow men at MEN Arena!) wouldn't let anyone take any pics here is a proper one!

Seagal came on and would only be referred to as "The Mojo Priest"! He and his band of Samuel L Jackson look-alikies played some mostly original blues numbers with a gospel tinge! His show was strangely a bit similar to a James Brown (RIP) show!

"The Mojo Priest" played his "hits", "Talk To My Ass", "Alligator Ass" and a cover of The Troggs "Wild Thing"! He was (very suprisingly!) very entertaining a good lively show and he was quite funny as well! His singing voice was a bit like Leonard Cohen!

Overall quite a good show! Next show is still not the Deftones, but Journey tomorrow!

HammerFall, Krokus and The Poodles - 23/02/07

2007-02-24T19:36:00.000Z

The first gig of the year and a cracking one at that. The first band up tonight was Swedens very own: The Poodles - now I know that they don't sound very metal, and they look every so camp on their website/cd. But any band who call there album: "Metal Will Stand Tall" must be at least watchable - they were however superb,like a very heavy Poison! But the name still puts me off buying their cd.

Next up were Swiss veteral metallers Krokus, Marc Storace still sounds exactly like Bon Scott (RIP) and Krokus still sound very AC/DC which while not bad was not brilliant!

HammerFall were up next and were hilariously silly, completely over the top with comically camp metal posing and many songs about hammers, including a very shit "it's hammer time" joke.. Hammer related songs include: HammerFall, Let The Hammer Fall, Raise The Hammer, Hammer Of Justice and Reign Of The Hammer!

They were absolutely kick ass in a "we're a swedish version of DragonForce" kind of way - excellent! They moved around on Bradford Rios very tiny stage like it was an arena, very commanding!

More HammerFall - getting their cds, however seems harder than getting rocking horse shit, Although I did get 2 free cds and an inflatable HammerFall guitar for subscribing to Metal Hammer :-)

Next gig is Deftones - 9th March, see you there! (update this is wrong! it's Steven Seagal!!)

Hot Fuzz - it's not a gig it's a film!

2007-02-19T20:30:00.000Z

Hot Fuzz, tis' a film not a gig, nor is it 'owt to do with music, but it is however very good! Emmy's review was quite negative in places and I thought i'd redress the balance... Yes it was predictable, but in a good way, yes it had sickening effects that i wasn't expecting, but again not a disapointment. However, as with most films these days you could have lost about 20 mins and quickened up the pace a bit! Editors today are crap! Also there were a few gags that missed the mark, but hey oh..

Emmy couldn't think of anything positive in her review - I am Mr. Negative regarding most things, but here are 10 positive points:

1: The first hour of the film is "fried gold", possibly the funniest first hour of a film i've seen in ages!
2: Multiple Bill Bailey's!
3: Timothy (James Bond) Dalton is the funniest camp villain seen in ages!
4: Edward (Equalizer) Woodward, classy!
5: The subtle piss take of "The Wicker Man" (also starring Edward Woodward)!
6: The use of score from Bad Boys II and Lethal Weapon!
7: Anne (Ken Barlow's dead wifey no: 1) Reid!
8: Nick Frost!
9: Nick Frost!
10: hmm, how about Nick Frost!
I could go on..

Overall, I would give it a strong 4 out 5, pop pickers. I think it may rate slightly higher than Shaun Of The Dead, which has a cameo appearance all of its own!

Guess who's back, Rush is back!!!

2007-02-17T14:00:00.000Z

There is an approx 13 second sound clip on the website - enough to get me excited anyway!!

"Cold gin time again..." ROA - 03/02/07

2007-02-04T18:22:00.000Z

The first visit to Rock Of Ages for 2007, with a new recruit, Richard, a.k.a "Psycho" or "Me? a Bee?" coming along with the usual hardcore group of Me, Mr. Steven and Emmy! As ever we started off in the Fenton below:

As per norm in the Fenton on a Saturday night were the usual insane fancy dress people, who were pissed after finishing the "legendary" "Otley Run" pub crawl.

We invited Garry who didn't make it, perhaps due to a very scary taxi incident on my birthday where Mr. and Mrs. Steven insisted that Garry must come for Sunday dinner or face certain death.

Ahh.. the usual beer bottle shaped microphones were out in full force again!

Here follows a couple of shots of Mr. Psycho who isn't overly found of his photo taking, but knows all the words to Iron Maiden's "Aces High"!

After much booze was quaffed, we headed to the front of the stage where we encountered a very active smoke machine! Here it is attacking Emmy...

More smoke.. cough!

As usual it was a top night and Mr. Steven was super-squiffy as ever, resulting in bust nose and an inappropriate pissing incident!

Next time we hope to get some more recruits so watch this space.. There is also some actual gigs coming up soon as well.

Happy New Year 2007!!!

2007-01-01T02:07:00.000Z

YES FOLKS, A WHOLE NEW YEARS WORTH OF GIGS TO LOOK FORWARD TO!!!!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL IN THE KNOW! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!!!

CARLSKI.....

Metal Performance Of The Year!

2006-12-28T15:15:00.000Z

The band who I thought kicked the most ass (arse?) and gave the best overall live performance this year were:

They could not win the gig of the year as it wasn't their own gig, but they were my favourite 45 (ish!) minutes of the year...!

Lamb Of God's set list (for those in the know!) was:

Ruin / Laid To Rest / Walk With Me In Hell / Pathetic / Now You’ve Got Something To Die For / Blacken The Cursed Sun / Redneck / Black Label

"F*/k yeah!!!"

Top Five Gigs Of The Year!

2006-12-28T14:25:00.000Z

As it's now 3 days to New Year, and seeing as this is a gig blog, how's about the top five gigs of the year:

To read about the gigs you will have to go to the blog entry in question, this is just a simple list:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1:

2:

3:

4:

5:

Here's to next year and many more gigs!

Gigs already confirmed for next year:

Journey,
Mastodon,
Deftones,
Dolly Parton! (oh yes!)

Top Ten Albums Of The Year 2006

2006-12-20T12:01:00.000Z

10: IN FLAMES - COME CLARITY

In Flames are a melodic death metal band from Sweden, who were on the "Unholy Alliance Tour" This album rocks!

9: DEFTONES - SATURDAY NIGHT WRIST

One of only two bands on this list I haven't seen live, however that will change in April when they are on at the refec!

8: LACUNA COIL - KARMACODE

Ah, Cristina, yes, you are an Italian metal goddess, and that's why your new album, makes my Top Ten....

7: DRAGONFORCE - INHUMAN RAMPAGE

Their gig at the Refec might not have been that good, but this album sure is! Especially if you like guitar solos and lots, and lots of them! It doesn't hurt that they play at 2 million mph either!

6: MUSE - BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS

"Starlight" is the pop song of the year, no question! Pretty much all the other songs rock too!

5: SLAYER - CHRIST ILLUSION

Slayer are Slayer, you either like them or you don't, but this new album, the first with the "Proper" line-up since 1990, kicks Satan's ass!!! (I suppose that should be ARSE! I am not an American!)

4: IRON MAIDEN - A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

Best album from "Maiden" since the eighties! Maybe best since "Piece Of Mind" in 1983! Live show was amazing as well, a true 10/10 album!

3: LAMB OF GOD - SACRAMENT

Before LOG came on at the "Unholy Alliance Tour" a roadie tested the drumkit and the MEN nearly collapsed, it was that loud! When the Band came on they ripped everyone a new arsehole, and this album does the same, magnificent!

2: MASTODON - BLOOD MOUNTAIN

You have already read in depth about this album before, and I love "Bladecatcher" by the way, Mr Me? A Bee?!!

1: TOOL - 10,000 DAYS

This is an album I bought from t'Asda 'cause I liked the sleeve! not a really good reason I know, but it is truly an amazing piece of work, its challenging to get into, but the musical rewards are many. It gets 11/10 and Tool were also by a long margin the best gig i've been to this year! (even the Yellow Men couldn't ruin this!)

So thats 2006 all done and dusted, what's gonna be good next year? My money is on the new Rush album!!!

Iron Maiden - 18/12/06

2006-12-19T23:09:00.000Z

Iron Maiden's new album "A Matter Of Life And Death" features quite highly in my Top 10 albums of the year! (See my next post!) So it was quite a good idea that they had to play the entire album all the way through this tour, which is what they did at Sheffield the other night.

As you can see, we had seats that were unfortunately quite a long way away from the stage. So therefore I pinched a few photos from the t'interweb as usual!

Here is Bruce Dickinson dwarfed by a rather large picture of Eddie dressed as a WWII soldier! This is during the very excellent song "These Colours Don't Run"

This picture is of Dave Murray (or is it Jannick Gers) and Steve "Arry" Harris (Mr. Clickety clackety bass himself!)

The stage design was rather like a bombed out village such like as seen in "Saving Private Ryan" or some other such film. Basically the new album is pretty much all about war and is strangely topical for Iron Maiden..

And, Oh yes, Eddie did appear as usual during "Iron Maiden" in a big tank type thing, excellent! Anyway due to the "Maiden" playing all their new album, they only had chance to play 5 old songs, so some people were quite pissed off that they did not get to hear "The Trooper", "The Number Of The Beast" or "Run To The Hills". However as this was my 10th (Yep thats right 10th!) Iron Maiden gig it was quite nice to hear some different songs and not the above over and over again! So to sum it up: Iron Maiden, a pretty convincing 9/10 as usual!

Oh, and finally, let's not forget Trivium, the dullest support band I've seen in a long time! I Nearly went to sleep, as they were peddling their "We sound like a shitty version of Metallica" songs, The guy even nicked James Hetfield's speaking style, very, very lame indeed! Another Band that were good for just one album... Pants!

Other Things That Week! (The Last Week In November!)

2006-12-12T17:53:00.000Z

The last week in November was a very busy week! Then after all that excitement, I got a cold and felt shit all last week, i'm still a bit sniffley now :-(

Anyway the other things were:

-------------------------

Little Britain on the 30th November at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, - got dragged on stage by David Walliams! I have proof, my friend Neil (who's a Policeman!) saw me!! Good show, pretty much the same as the live DVD tho!

-------------------------

Rock Of Ages/Fenton visit on the 1st of December, met up with Emma and Dan, plus Mr. Me? A Bee? + Friend and Peter H. in the Fenton. Then Myself + Emma and Dan went to ROA in the Union and met DJ Dave and jived to a bit of Rock for a while! I then got a Taxi home with an exceedingly nice Taxi driver who only charged me a Tenner! (It's usually loads more!)

Unfortunately, Mr. Steven couldn't make it, so the ashtray contents eating event had to be postponed!

I've got no pictures from this ROA, so am re-using an old one! Yes I know it's got Rob (AKA Seaweed!) on it, but thats to add an Aussie theme, as a tip of the hat to Emma's Aussie Blog! This reasoning is of course utter bollocks, but what the hell!

DragonForce - 01/12/06

2006-12-12T17:13:00.000Z

DragonForce at the Refec at Leeds Uni, the sound was particularly crap, which is not unusual for the refec.. I wished i'd gone and seen Ryan's band Chickenhawk at the Fenton, instead.

Here are some pictures of DragonForce in action tho:

Asia - 28/11/06

2006-12-12T13:47:00.000Z

Ah, the reformed Asia or let's stalk Geoffrey Downes part 2!

Asia reformed with their "original line-up" in February, this tale has being told in a previous blog! and the gig finally came around..

Asia decided to play every single song from their first album a couple from Alpha and a few old numbers from the members previous bands:

So Steve Howe did the old "Yes" chestnut - "Roundabout", John Wetton did King Crimson's "Court Of The Crimson King", Carl Palmer did ELP's version of Copeland's "Fanfare For The Common Man" and Geoff did of course "Video Killed The Radio Star"...

Now on the previous Asia tour, (In Bradford!) I had, had a few jars and took the piss out of Mr. Downes (as he signed my CD), slating his "Buggles" masterpiece (and No:1 hit!) the aformentioned "Video Killed The Radio Star"......

Anyway, Asia recorded the live show and had it available for sale on CD straight after the gig. You had to queue up for the CD and then queue up to get it signed, When I got to Mr. Downes, he quickly signed it and then ran off out of the fire escape... leaving everyone else in the queue to get just three signatures! Did he recognise me from Bradford and run off! I am now awaiting the "Restraining Order"!
The gig was very good however!! and I haven't been arrested yet!

Here is the aformentioned signed CD of the nights show! Note I have all 4 signatures! After I scared Geoff off, everyone else in the queue after me only got 3!

Tool & Mastodon - 24/11/06

2006-12-09T14:58:00.000Z

Wow! This has been a long time coming! I have 2 other posts to come as well! It's been a while, but i've been busy and then ill. Anyway I still have a rotten cold, and i've lost one draft, so here goes....

Mastodon: As seen in previous posts, a band that was difficult to get into, although i decided on genius eventually. What would they be like live? Well, not bad, but had rubbish sound... a fate that quite a few opening acts have to deal with..

However, as I was familiar with their output by now, I thought they were quite good, although I would very much like to see their own show! Oh, and for the benefit of Mr. "Me ? A Bee ?", they did not play "Bladecatcher".

Anyway on to Tool: Firstly Tool do not like smoking or people taking photos of their show, even with camera phones.. (Garry was told off for smoking, I had a torch, repeatedly shone in my face until I gave up trying to take some piccies!) So here are some pics that i half-inched from the murky depths of somewhere on the net...

Tool were, how can we say this, f*/king awesome! Easily the best band seen all year! Everything about the show was excellent, the lights, the lazers, the video screens, the fact that Maynard is one strange individual. I summed it up after the show with the comment "Floyd Metal".

Tool's set list was as expected. Most of the excellent new CD "10,000 Days" plus the cream of their old stuff.

Maynard stood right at the back of the stage all throughout the set, never ever wandering to the front... Quite often he would sing with his back to the audience. A very strange indivdual.

At one point he said "have you heard about boot-laces", whiched seemed very random at the time, but apparently one of Danny Carey's boots flew off whilst he was drumming!

The sound throughout was crystal, it was like listening to their CD's at home, If only Mastodon had the same sound.

The best song? Well that was easily "10,000 Days" a ridiculously overlong and convoluted prog metal marathon - it lasts approximately 18 minutes!

Next gig was the reformed Asia, That review coming soon!

Paul Simon - 04/11/06

2006-11-07T11:19:00.000Z

After the mayhem that was Slayer, I was expecting a nice quiet evening with Paul Simon.... I didn't get it as there was a lot of trouble at the show, yes, Paul Simon fans are bigger lunatics than Slayer fans! Can you believe it!

Basically, Paul said "why are you all sitting down at the front?" and then loads of people ran to the front of the stage and some people to the right got pissed off that they couldn't see, so loads of the MEN Yellow men turned up and a scuffle occured, I though one old geezer was going to get decked by this guy in front. It was very funny to watch!

It took the MEN Yellowmen ages to sort out the fracas at the front and I was taking far more notice of this event, than what was going on on stage!

What can we say about Paul then? Well, He was good, he played a couple of new songs of "Surprise" and the usual one off "Graceland" and a few Simon & Garfunkel numbers, but the best song was "Train In The Distance" from "Hearts And Bones", the best and most under-rated Paul Simon album..

After all the trouble though, I'll remember the gig for that and not the music. I think i'll stick to Metal shows in future, as they are much safer!

Unholy Alliance - 03/11/06

2006-11-07T11:03:00.000Z

The Unholy Alliance is a tour featuring: Slayer, In Flames, Lamb Of God, Children Of Bodom and Thine Eyes Bleed..

Mr. Steven missed out on the most excellent metal mayhem by having to go to Paris on a business trip, so the ticket was passed on to Garry from work instead!

The poster for the event is shown below:

Thine Eyes Bleed were the first band on but they must have come on stage some time before 6pm as we totally missed them! The first band we saw was Children Of Bodom from Finland, who do songs in the melodic death metal style, they were ok but not particulary memorable, + I was especially looking forward to Lamb Of God who were up next:

Below are a couple of shots of Lamb Of God:

Lamb Of God are one mean muthaf@&kin' band from the "South" as in the American south, and they came with just one reason to "kick ass!" and they didn't dissapoint! The drum tech tested the kick drum before they came on and it was deafening, never mind thine eyes bleed, it was more like thine ears bleed!

Lamb Of God are Metal with a capital M.. albeit with extra southern style riffing, the best song was definately "Redneck" from new CD "Sacrament" unreal! I can't wait to see them do their own tour!

Anyway, In Flames (from Sweden!) were up next and after Lamb Of God, they were a bit underwhelming, but still quite good in a death metal meets Jonathan Davies from Korn kinda way! Their light show however didn't go down too well with my moby's camera, so no pics of them!

Next up of course were the mighty Slayer!!!!

Slayer are possibly the heaviest of all metal bands, a great influence to all the other acts on the bill I would think! This was the 6th time I'd seen then and it was probably the best yet, they totally ruled!

Slayer were at their Satanic best, with their Marshall speakers at either side of the stage set up like inverted crosses. They played 4 songs from the new "Christ Illusion" CD and all the songs you could ever want! ending with the skullcrushing "Angel Of Death" giving their usual 110% Amazing..11/10!!

Mastodon - Blood Mountain (3)

2006-10-19T15:08:00.000+01:00

OK, I've had this for a couple of weeks now. Troy Sanders (Mastodon frontman) claims it should take three weeks at least to get into this album... Well he is bang on the mark, as I've now decided its one of the best blasts of metal that i've heard for a while!

All I can say is buy it now! it fecking rocks!! Every track is a humdinger!!

Lacuna Coil - 12/10/06

2006-10-13T01:13:00.000+01:00

If you remember a while back - blog dated 16/04/06, I was very much looking forward to this gig! And, boy they did not disappoint! They played all the cool tunes from their Karmacode album, and some from all their other albums too!

As you can see we were quite near the front..

Ahh, the lovely Cristina..

Andrea entertaining the crowd...

The Coil rocking out.. The sound was superb, It really sounded like listening to the album, it was that clear!
Great band, great gig!

Mastodon - Blood Mountain (2)

2006-10-08T22:01:00.000+01:00

I've played it a couple more times now! I'm leaning towards evil genius - there's some very scary stuff on there, maybe it is as good as they say!

Mastodon - Blood Mountain

2006-10-07T18:00:00.001+01:00

This is one of those albums that has got ridiculously good reviews in every magazine I've encountered - 4/5 Kerrang! 10/10 Metal Hammer, 9/10 Classic Rock, 4.5/5 Terrorizer: It has to be one of the mosted hyped releases of the year! The metal album of the year apparently... Even t'ASDA is selling it!

Anyway, as t'ASDA were selling it for £9.77, I thought "I buy it, see what its like". So is it the greatest metal album of the year? Is it even any good! The answer is I don't really know - I've now listened to it about 3 times and I still can't decide if its genius or total bollocks!

The only thing I can say at the moment is that Brann Dailor is possibly the finest drummer i've heard in many a long year, he is like Keith Moon on acid. The guitarist is also very, very talented! But there is just something not right...

Anyway, come November 24th, I will see them live supporting Tool, that may answer many questions.. ?/10 at the moment, I think i'll give it a few more listens first!

Asia - From Last Year!

2006-10-05T15:10:00.000+01:00

Following on from the GPS gig (See Below!) I found these pictures from last March's (Old) Asia show in Bradford. It may sound like a bit of Geoffrey Downes slagging, but not so, I have a ticket for the "Original" Asia come November!

Ohh.. look it's Geoff Downes before he sacked everyone!

Geoff with his many keyboards thinking "hmm.. original line up would make more cash!"

Geoff thinks "I have John Wetton's number somewhere, I think i'll give him a ring!"

John Payne and Guthrie Govan when they were still in Asia

Geoff and Guthrie.

Asia CD signed by Geoff Downes, John Payne, Guthrie Govan and Chris Slade.

Guthrie's Solo CD, its very good if you like instrumental guitar albums - it's a bit like Joe Satriani. Check out: http://www.myspace.com/cornfordrecords

GPS - 26/09/06

2006-09-27T19:00:00.000+01:00

You've got to feel sorry for John Payne (Bass, Vocals), getting kicked out of a band who he had saved from going under 14 years ago. (that would be Asia by the way!) Anyway whilst Geoffrey Downes has got the original Asia line-up back together, along with John Wetton, Steve Howe and Carl Palmer. Guthrie Govan (Guitar) Jay Schellen (Drums) also found themselves out of a job, so together they formed GPS (Govan/Payne/Schellen, geddit!)

GPS released their first album "Window To The Soul" on the 28th August, here is a picture of the CD cover, it's very good indeed:

GPS appeared on stage at the very early time of half-seven, in fact they were already on when we got to Bradford Rios. As they were supporting Y&T they only got 40 minutes. They reproduced the sound of the album very well and were on fine form, but we only heard them do five songs... how many had we missed...

Here, as ever are some pix of GPS in action:

In-between the GPS set and Y&T, it seemed like a good idea to venture to the bar and get a pint for myself and Dave. Whilst i was at the bar, I bumped into Guthrie Govan who was also buying pints. We had a chat about how good the GPS album was, and how they weren't mean't to talk about the whole "Asia thing".

It was at this point I asked him "how many songs did you play?" To which the answer was "only six, as we only got a 40 minute support slot!" I was pleased we had only missed one song. It was at this point I got his "mate" to take the following photo of us:

Anyway his "mate" was actually Jay Schellen (the drummer - pay attention!), and got the following picture with him too:

They were both very cool and not your typical "rock star" types. They even laughed when i said "I hope you don't mind me telling you this, but I've got tickets to one of original Asia shows" to which Guthrie said "well at least you get two good bands now!"

So we shall see how Geoff Downes and the "original" Asia compare, come the 28th November at the Liverpool Academy.. That's all for now.

Y&T - 26/09/06

2006-09-27T15:15:00.000+01:00

Y&T are an old band from the 70's who are still knocking about - The main guy is called Dave Meniketti, and most of their albums are out of print, so didn't recognise many songs, only meanstreak. They were however quite good, but I'd really gone to see the support act GPS. (more on them in next post)

Here is a couple of pictures of Y&T in action:

The Cult - 23/09/06

2006-09-24T18:21:00.000+01:00

I wasn't feeling too well yesterday, but managed to make it anyway. Met up in The Fenton before gig with Mr. and Mrs. Steven, Mr. Mark, Dave and Debbie. Also present were Simon, t'other Paul and his other-half*, Ruth, Vanessa and her brother*. Inside the Refec, the temperature was very high, on a couple of occasions I though I might have to leave as I was not feeling too good, but the band were too good to miss. Mr. Steven et al, went down to the front, I prefered to stay a bit further back with Simon. The Cult played all the required hits, and not suprisingly ended with "She Sells Sanctuary". Some of us then headed to The Packhorse for another pint whilst we tried to order a taxi.

*Sorry, names have been forgotten again!

As ever here are a few piccies, Note: These pictures are all half-inched from Mr. Steven's blog as I had no camera available!

Firstly Myself, Mr. Steven and Mr. Mark.

Here we are with the Simon and t'other Paul!

And as ever a couple of the band in action:

More Rock Of Ages stuff!

2006-09-04T15:29:00.000+01:00

Mr. Steven has now uploaded some of his highly dangerous and strange pictures from Saturday on to Mr. Steven's Ramblings Emporium: http://mr-steven.blogspot.com/ This one being by far the most sane out of the lot of them!

Rock Of Ages (2) - 02/09/06

2006-09-03T14:06:00.000+01:00

Ah, t'was Rock Of Ages week again! This was our first visit since April when Mr. Rob (A.K.A. Mr. Seaweed) was here. Tonight we had a few more friends than usual: Miss. Andi and Mr. Ian from ISS, Mr. Mark from Sulzer, Mr. Paul (A.K.A. Hospital-head) and some of Emma's Blackburn crew. The night was generally good as usual, although we lost Mr. Mark and we had a bit of trouble with some geezer who said we'd nicked his seats even tho we had been there for at least half an hour. Mr. Paul had a bit of a to-do with said geezer and then went home early as the whole encounter had spoilt his night.

Anyway, the rest of us carried on, and had a good time! BTW this piccy was nicked from Emma's Bloglet without permission, but i'm sure she won't mind, as payment for use, can i point you towards: Emma's Bloglet so you can have a look at Emma's version of events and a few more quality photos! Oh and Mr. Steven, I expect to see some on your blog too! (Mr Steven's ramblings emporium)

The Rolling Stones - 29/08/06

2006-08-31T00:26:00.000+01:00

Ah, them bones! Yep the Strollers are exceedingly old, but that Mick Jagger sure still has some energy for a 63 year old bloke! He also still drives women wild, even my mum (60) climbed up on the seats to get a good look at him! Anyway their show was frickin' amazing, wonderful stage design, crazy lighting and effects, and a great selection of songs, the ones that you can go woo-woo to were best - e.g. Miss You, Sympathy for the Devil, Streets of Love etc, but they were all good. Whilst Mick was a man of action, good old Keef was as laid back as ever - "Alwight it's great to be here! - It's great to be anywhere!" and laughed at the folk at the front with the inflatable coconut trees, in reference to his infamous fall out of one recently, one would guess!

Might be good to mention that the gig was at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff, which is enormous! There were approx 50,000 punters watching the show, which at £150 and £90 per head, will be a nice fat wad for Mick and co. to go home with! The Stadium famously has a sliding roof, which they decided to keep closed, presumably for sound reasons. Also the stadium is bang in the centre of town, so if the roof was open, everyone for miles would have heard them!

As i said on Tuesday, the ticket said no cameras but I got a few shots on my phone cam. In the one above, (I know its not right clear, but then it is a phone cam!) You may just be able to make out that the Bones are on a little stage that projected out from the main stage right to the back of the stadium, so everyone could have a good look. For the last song - Satisfaction, Mick ran from the main stage right to the end of the track and back again, whilst still singing, that's the length of a football pitch! It said in the paper this morning he needed oxygen backstage, I can't say i'm surprised!

Strolling Bones - Tonight!!!

2006-08-29T17:04:00.000+01:00

Here I am sat in the Hotel in Cardiff in South Wales, writing this very blog. I'm here in Cardiff to see the legendary Rolling Stones at the equally legendary Millennium stadium. Cameras are banned according to the ticket, so they will be no crappy gig shots!

Anyway here's a picture of my talking Dalek mug I bought at the Doctor Who exhibition! (For those who don't know, Doctor Who is the UK's favourite Sci-fi show filmed here in Cardiff!) More on the Stones, I predict on Thursday!

Fred and Ellie's Wedding do - 11/08/06

2006-08-12T15:23:00.000+01:00

Here we are having fun and games and "air guitaring" at Fred and Ellie's wedding night do! Yes myself and a number of comrades, also known Emma, Joe, Michelle, Jim and Jo travelled to the perils of the greater 'uddersfield area on Friday for the bash. Also featuring Jitesh and his missus (sorry Jit, mind has gone blank!) Joe as usual feasted on multiple pints of Strongbow and got comically drunk as usual, but he is a great laugh.

After several pints of Strongbow, I also had the urge to act silly and encourage the bridegroom to accompany me in a spot of the old "air guitar", yep that us, (see above and below!)

Afterwards, we got a taxi back to the train station, where a very nice bloke who worked for First, let us into the very locked station waiting room, whilst we waited for the train back to Leeds.

Many thanks to Emma for being our photographer for the evening and providing these three amusing photograph do da's for me.

Well Done Emma!

2006-08-02T17:45:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie and yet again nowt to do with gigs, but I wanted to say a big well done to my friend Emma for finishing her Postgraduate Certificate coursework! You can have a look at Emma's equally interesting and infinitely better written blog by clicking on the link to the right on this page!

The Name is Cornell... Chris Cornell

2006-07-29T21:24:00.000+01:00

Cool news: Chris Cornell, singer from Audioslave and formally Soundgarden has been chosen to sing the theme tune to the new James Bond film "Casino Royale". Not only is he the first rockin' singer to sing a Bond theme, he is the first male singer since a-ha in 1987. The song is called "You Know My Name" and was written by Mr. Cornell and the regular Bond composer David Arnold, it is also the first song since 1982 not to have the same title as the film.

Tool to tour UK in November!

2006-07-29T21:18:00.000+01:00

Tool are playing Manchester MEN Arena on the 24th November - Must get a ticket!

Tool - Right In Two

2006-07-27T16:01:00.000+01:00

I really love Maynard's lyrics, here are some more great ones from "Right In Two" from Tool's 10,000 Days CD! Again they are very apt in regard to recent news events.

"Angels on the sideline,
Puzzled and amused.
Why did Father give these humans free will?
Now they're all confused.

Don't these talking monkeys know that
Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys,
Where there's one you're bound to divide it.
Right in two.

Angels on the sideline,
Baffled and confused.
Father blessed them all with reason.
And this is what they choose.
And this is what they choose...

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs,
They forge a blade,
And where there's one
they're bound to divide it,
Right in two.
Right in two.

Monkey killing monkey killing monkey.
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs.
They make a club.
And beat their brother, down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery."

Again words by Maynard James Keenan

Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums

2006-07-27T15:38:00.000+01:00

There is some weird shit happening in the world again, and for some reason this song by A Perfect Circle has been going round in my head:

"I'll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and all your demons

I'll be the one to protect you from
A will to survive and a voice of reason

I'll be the one to protect you from
Your enemies and your choices son
They're one in the same
I must isolate you
Isolate and save you from yourself

Swayin to the rhythm of the new world order and
Count the bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums

The boogeymen are coming
The boogeymen are coming

Keep your head down, go to sleep, to the rhythm of the war drums"

Words by Maynard James Keenan

Rush + Dissapointment = Upset Carlski

2006-07-24T13:59:00.000+01:00

This the new Rush release: "Replay X3". It is 3 DVD's of the 1981, 1984 and 1988 tours, with an audio CD of the 1984 tour. It also has replicas of the tour books from each tour as well! See below!

Now then, you would think Carlski would be in "Rush Heaven" yet there is a slight problem: The picture quality is frickin' cack! None of this digital remastering lark here, just a DVD transfer straight from the old VHS tapes! It's the first time I've ever being dissapointed with Rush in 26 cd's 3 other DVD's and four live shows!!

I haven't got my P.U.L.S.E dvd through yet, but Andy assures me its good, so hopefully that will give me some better viewing! Pants! :-(

Bally's Wedding - 23/07/06

2006-07-23T20:16:00.000+01:00

Again, not technically a gig, but a good day out non-the-less! Myself and Yunas, travelled to Hitchin (which took us 3 hours!) to go to our work collegue Baldeep's wedding at the Sikh temple. It was a very interesting ceremony, which lasted quite a while and then we had some very nice food! Here are a few pictures:

Syd Barrett: 1946 - 2006

2006-07-11T14:59:00.000+01:00

Some more sad news, from the BBC Website:

"Syd Barrett, one of the original members of legendary rock group Pink Floyd, has died at the age of 60, the band's spokeswoman has confirmed.
He was born Roger Barrett in Cambridge and met future bandmates Roger Waters and David Gilmour at school there.

The guitarist was invited to join Pink Floyd by Waters in 1965 but left three years later after only one album with his mental state affected by drugs.

"He died very peacefully a couple of days ago," said the spokeswoman.

"There will be a private family funeral."

He had suffered from diabetes in recent years and had not been recording music."

I think all we need to say is: "Shine on, you crazy diamond"

Sabine Dünser: 1977 - 2006

2006-07-11T14:33:00.000+01:00

Sabine was the singer in a band called Elis, whom you may remember I saw back in May, she was kind enough to sign my post card and laughed at my comedy yorkshireness which she couldn't understand. Sadly on the 7th July, she died of a brain haemorrhage. She was a great singer, and left us with a couple of really good albums.

I'll leave the last words to the band:

"Tief bestürzt und traurig müssen wir euch mitteilen, dass Sabine nicht mehr unter uns weilt!

Während der Bandprobe am Freitag den 7.7.06 hat Sabine eine Gehirnblutung erlitten, an der sie einen Tag später im Spital erlegen ist!

Aus Rücksicht auf die Angehörigen und Freunde haben wir uns entschlossen, die Homepage vom Netz zu nehmen.

Wir brauchen nun Zeit um zu entscheiden, wie wir weiter vorgehen werden und beantworten bis auf weiteres keine Mails.

Sing mit den Engeln Sabine! Wir werden dich nie vergessen!

Chris, Max, Pete, Tom"

Which translates as:

"Deeply confused and sad, we have to inform you, that Sabine isn't among us anymore!

While the bands rehearsal on Friday the 7.7.06, Sabine suffered a cerebral haemorrhage from which she died a day later at the hospital!

On regard to the family and friends, we have decided to take the homepage from the net.

We need time now, to decide if and how we approach further and we will not answer any mails at the moment.

Sing with the angels Sabine! We will never forget you!

Chris, Max, Pete, Tom"

Pesky photos on blogger!

2006-07-04T17:15:00.000+01:00

This is a post for my friend Emma, who was having piccy trouble on her blog. This piccy is on my work network drive and linked via "add an image from the web", so Emma, have a go and it might just work! BTW: if any one is wondering "strange photo", well its from our fancy dress day that we did for "Children in Need" last November.

Yes I know this is nothing to do with gigs but randomness is generally a good thing!

Death Cab for Cutie (2) -27/06/06

2006-06-28T17:20:00.000+01:00

Second time this year for DCfC, but exactly the same set! (luckily it's quite a good set!) Now I know in the past I have said that gigs at the Refec at Leeds Uni always sound crap, but for the second time this year I have been proved wrong! They sounded better than they did at the Academy in Manchester last March.

Dave was also reasonably impressed, he didn't think they had many songs that you could DJ very easily. However he was interested in compilation CD! Not entirely sure I like the fact that Ticketmaster appear to have taken over ticketing for the Uni tho!

Here, as is rapidly become the norm, are some pix (note that the photography may be inproving slightly!)

The Who - 25/06/06

2006-06-26T02:13:00.000+01:00

Who's better, Who's best! No doubt about it The Who came to Leeds for the second time in two weeks and rocked for nearly two hours! They started with "Who Are You" and played pretty much what you would expect between that song and "Won't Get Fooled Again " which was the last song.

"The Seeker" was an unexpected nice suprise, but unfortunately they swapped "Eminence Front" which they played at the Leeds Uni gig, with "Cry If You Want" a less good track from "It's Hard", but other than that they were excellent.

Best quips from Roger - "Last week it was 100 degrees at the uni, this week it's fucking freezing, you just can't win!" and "Now we are gonna be pretentious arse-holes and go off, have a quick cup of tea and then come back on!".

When "Baba O'Reilly" came on, there were a couple of young kids, about 16ish, who were asking "Is this a special song or something?" and I said to them, "Yeah, you might know it, it's the theme tune to "CSI:NY", and they replied "Oh yeah, we love that show" and another girl piped up "I always think of that as well, now!" Damn you, Jerry Bruckheimer!

Here as ever are some pix!

"England did well, son!"

Big screen action!

Dig the woolly hat, Pete!

Next gig - Death Cab for Cutie (Round Two!) at Leeds Uni on Tuesday, come back after then!

Attack Of The Scary Hair!! (A.K.A: Art Garfunkel) - 19/06/06

2006-06-20T15:04:00.000+01:00

Let's first have a look at Manchester Bridgewater Hall, as I think it is a very nice looking building! (Arrgh! I'm turning into Prince Charles!!)

Hmm, Mr Garfunkel, he amazed us all by appearing to melt into another dimension right before our very eyes!

Or: Was it just Carlski who cannot take photos for toffee. Digital Photography course anyone!

Anyway: Mr Seaweed (A.K.A Rob) would have loved this gig, as Mr. G artfully (cough!) sang his way through many of the classic Simon + Garfunkel tunelets. All was well until He brought on Mini Me/Cloned Son: James Garfunkel, who unfortunately appeared to have being afflicted with the same comedy hair as his dear old Dad!

The poor lad looked very frightened as he sang a song on his own, and then went scurrying off!

So to sum up: Not bad, but methinks that When Paul Simon tours his excellent new album "Surprise" (Go pick up a copy now, boys and girls!) He will be much better! Although if anyone saw him on Jools Holland's TV show the other week will know he currently has "hair issues" as well!

Journey - 05/06/06

2006-06-06T15:04:00.000+01:00

"I've been waiting for this gig for 25 years" said one punter as we were queuing to get into a sold out Manchester Apollo for the Journey gig. Yes, its true Journey last played in the UK in 1981, so anticipation for the return was running high. I was not hopeful of them being any good as original singer Steve Perry (who was pretty much the best rock vocalist of all time) is out of the band. But they delivered in fine style.

Steve Augeri was a very good replacement for Steve Perry, not quite as good but pretty close, however the revelation was Deen Castronovo (the Drummer) whose voice was almost exactly the equal of Steve Perry on the songs he sang! Journey ran through pretty much a greatest hits set + 3 new songs and the crowd lapped it up.

To sum it up, I would have to say that this was by far the best gig since the all mighty Rush played 2 years ago, truly fantastic!!

Whitesnake - 27/05/06

2006-05-28T15:42:00.000+01:00

After staying overnight in Manchester, it was off to Whitesnake with my mate Honk Stewart! The Snake were a little dissapointing tonight as they played 90% the same set as in their 2004 tour! David Coverdale looked very scary, a bit like a skeleton, but still all the middle-aged women were screaming for him! Deep Purple's Burn was like last time the best song! (Anyone wondering why the Snake would be doing Purple songs may not know that David Coverdale was the singer in Purple from 1974-76.)

David's new bass player is called Uriah Duffy, David asked him if his parents liked Dickens, he said "No, they loved 70's progressive rock and that he was named after the band Uriah Heep", he also mentioned that he had a brother called Yes!

Here as ever are some pics!

Reb Beach (ex Winger) on Guitar

David and Uriah!

David Gilmour - 26/05/06

2006-05-27T15:27:00.000+01:00

Having been ill for a couple of weeks I was beginning to think I would miss this one too, but luckily I made it to Manchester. It was a great gig, even thought the air-conditioning in the Hall must have failed as it was ridiculously hot all night. Anyway David played every song from his number one album "From an Island" was luckily doesn't have a bad track on it. He also play some songs from the extentensive Pink Floyd back catalogue, including a full 23 minute version of Echoes and also Arnold Layne (the first ever Floyd single from 1967!) He also brought along special guests David Crosby and Graham Nash (who my Mum bumped into in Sainsbury's!) to sing on a couple of numbers!

Here are a couple of photos!

David + Richard Wright (also of Floyd) on Keyboards!

David + Crozzer and Nash!

Lordi + Eurovision!

2006-05-22T15:39:00.000+01:00

Very much enjoyed Finland's very metal entrants, Lordi winning the Eurovision song contest! The UK came 19th by the way!

Little Britain - Update!

2006-05-20T11:56:00.000+01:00

Stop Press: Got another chance to see Little Britain, they have announced some new dates here in Leeds at the Grand Theatre. So have got tickets for 30th November!!

Mr. Steven, my Sky+ box has Moomins too!

2006-05-16T23:13:00.000+01:00

Dear Mr. Steven,

My Sky+ box, seems to have the same Moomin infestation as yours! How did you get rid?

Many Thanks,

Carlski

P.S. unless Doctor Who is now a police series called New Tricks?

Little Britain - 10/05/06

2006-05-10T13:56:00.000+01:00

Have sent my Mum and Her friend to investigate this one, as I am not very well at the moment! Oh well, I'm sure they will bring a DVD of the show out before Christmas, then I can see for myself! Hopefully I'll feel better for Dave Gilmour in 2 weeks time.

Leaves' Eyes + Atrocity + Elis - 06/05/06

2006-05-09T14:24:00.000+01:00

First up let's start with Elis, Elis are a gothic metal band from the Principality of Liechtenstein, a very small country between Switzerland and Austria, and sing mainly in English with a few songs in German. The lead singer is a lady called Sabine, who kindly signed my post card after I had told her I already had her CD and it was good!

Here are some shots of them in action:

The Next band on were Atrocity, who are from Germany, interestingly they have the exact same band members as the headlining act Leaves' Eyes. The two main guys are: Alex Krull (lead singer Atrocity, support singer Leaves' Eyes)and Liv Kristine (lead singer Leaves' Eyes, support singer Atrocity). Liv is from Norway and is married to Alex! Atrocity have many songs that sound a bit like Rammstein, but with english lyrics! Their album is called Atlantis and is a concept album, all about, yep, you guessed it, the legend of Atlantis. They finished their set with a rather storming cover of the Tears For Fears song "Shout", metaltastic!! Here are some pics, note the cool mic stand!

After the Atrocity set, the band wandered off for 15 mins and came back as Leaves' Eyes and played most of their Vinland Saga CD, a concept album about Erik the Red discovering America! and also a few tracks from their first (and superior imho) CD Lovelorn. The best tracks have nice contrasting vocals between Alex (death grunts!) and Liv (great natural voice). Leaves' Eyes are a much more melodic band than Atrocity, very different considering its the same 6 guys! Here are some more piccies:

Afterwards Alex posed for this picture for me, He is very nice for a large scary German guy!

Inbetween the two sets, Liv nipped out for a quick fag, at which point I said "Hello" and asked her if she would sign my CD of her solo album, Which she very kindly did!

Back of CD book!

Front of CD!

After getting Alex to pose for the scary photo, it seemed rude not to buy a copy of Atrocity's new CD as well, well it was only a tenner! Very good it is too!

What an action packed night that was! Anyway, oh by the way, Liv's album is very good too, it was a bit of a shock as it is a pop music album with no metal tracks, but not bad all the same!

Sisters Of Mercy - 03/05/06

2006-05-05T14:03:00.000+01:00

Ah, The Sisters Of Mercy - this gig got of to a very bad start! I due to meet Simon from work in O'Neill's at 6pm for Burger and Pints, but on the way into Leeds, there was "An incident in Pickering St" as the Police kindly put it that stopped me getting into Leeds pretty much full stop! We were not allowed into the town centre and I was eventually dropped off outside the Library pub near Uni at 7pm, also my only copy of Simon's mobile number was in my email and not my phone :-(

So I headed straight to the fine drinking establishment known as The Fenton to meet Mr. Steven, Mrs. Tracy, and Mr. Mark who also had been stuck in traffic. After a swift pint we heard that Mr. Stan and Mrs. Olga were also stuck in traffic but had found the alternative drinking establishment The Eldon, so we wandered off toward the Eldon for more pints.

Mr. Mark was getting jittery at this point thinking we would miss the gig, so we headed over to the Refec at about 8:30ish.

Once inside the Sisters came on, and could have been pretty much anyone, as they had so much smoke you couldn't actually see them, just these shadowy silhouettes (see photos below) They played most songs we wanted, eg Temple of Love, This Corrosion and Dominion, but Mr. Steven was upset that they did not play Marian! After gig, we bumped into Simon, who was like "where the bloody hell were you!", but wasn't too upset luckily.

Then we proceeded to Drinking establishment no:3 The Packhorse for last orders, which wasn't until half 12, so many more pints were comsumed! Felt strangely fine the next day which was quite a suprise!

Next Gig - Leaves' Eyes watch this space!

Some piccys follow!

You can kinda see a guitarist!

Loads of smoke and Andrew Eldritch!

Tracy, Steve, Olga, Mark + Stan!

Tracy, Steve, Olga, Mark, and my finger!

Tracy, Steve + Olga!

Lacuna Coil

2006-04-16T20:39:00.000+01:00

Lacuna Coil are touring the UK in October, very excited about this one! Don't know what the venues or exact dates are yet!
Check out their new album "Karmacode" splendidly excellent goth metal!

Fear Factory - 13/04/06

2006-04-14T12:08:00.000+01:00

I was pretty ill for most of this week, and I felt really bad at work and didn't think I'd make it to this one, but after a long sleep (all afternoon) I managed to get my head in gear for about 7ish, when Mr. Steven came round. After a quick taxi ride to Leeds Met, we were at the gig! We missed the first band but saw the second: Breed 77 who were very good, they came on with a sound that was very heavy and was expecting death style grunts, but real singing came out! During their set there was a circle pit of a very large size featuring 14 year olds getting their skulls pummelled. One kid smashed into a guy carrying 3 beers, who not suprisingly was not to pleased. He smacked the kid in the face, the kid then did about 2 full circles of the pit and then just fell face down in the middle! He was last seen sitting outside with an ice-pack on his chops!

Anyway on to the main attraction: The mighty Fear Factory, I've seen them a couple of times before, but they seemed particularly brain damaging heavy tonight! All the expected tracks were played from all of their multiple albums, but they left out Bite the hand that bleeds (from the film Saw!) and Gary Numan's cars, which was a bit of a shame! But they were damn fine! We bumped into Mr. Steven's mate, Jed whom then promptly gave us a lift home. Then after Chow Mein (from chinese take-away) and a cup of tea at Mr. Steven's it was time for bed! Here as usual, the pictorial evidence:

Next gig: The Sisters Of Mercy - see you soon after!

Rock Of Ages - 01/04/06

2006-04-03T14:11:00.000+01:00

This week, my good self, my mate Emma from work, her boyfriend Dan, and Steve and Rob, (my oldest mates!) went along to Rock Of Ages, which is a once month rock/metal night held at Mine/Bar coda in Leeds University Union. There was a band, Conquest Of Steel who played before the disco, who were quite amusing! We all got drunk, and a good time was had by all! Here are some photos:

Emma and Steve, with Conquest Of Steel shirt!

Carlski singing!

Emma and Dan!

From left to right: Dan, Steve, Emma + Rob!

From left to right: Dan, Emma, Rob + Me!

Craziness!

Snakes On A Plane!

2006-04-03T13:40:00.000+01:00

Nothing at all to do with gigs but damn cool! I for one cannot wait! check out the links section!

Staind - 04/03/06

2006-03-29T17:35:00.000+01:00

Wow three gigs in three consecutive days! Well I said I went to a few gigs, didn't I! Saved the best till last. I love Staind and their super-depressing variety of rock and thought they were great! Notice the rescheduling, they were originally meant to have played last September, reason for change: Unknown - they were probably suffering from dark moods and wouldn't leave the house! - Next update will be sometime after the Fear Factory gig - 13/04/06ish.

Death Cab for Cutie - 03/03/06

2006-03-29T17:16:00.000+01:00

First thing, some breaking news DCfC have announced a gig at the Leeds Uni refectory on Tuesday 27th June, of course tickets have already been sourced! OK that means they must have been good? Yes they were in a "we sound like early REM kind of a way". The info on the LUU webpage: www.leedstickets.com/eventinfo/317/Death-Cab-For-Cutie is a bit out of date though, the article spends all its time going on about DCfC's 2003 release "Transatlanticism" which fair enough is their best album, however it is not their latest, that would be "Plans", released last September, which is also a great album as well. Best bet? Buy both, you will not be disappointed!

Sisters of Mercy - 03/05/06

2006-03-24T14:00:00.000Z

Another new gig! - Sisters of Mercy - 3rd May - Leeds Uni, Goth on!!!

Forthcoming gigs!

2006-03-18T13:59:00.000Z

I never use a diary for anything so I though that here would be a good place to list all my forthcoming gigs so far for this year!

Here we go!

Fear Factory - 13th April - Leeds Met
Leaves' Eyes - 6th May - Bradford Rios
Little Britain - 10th May - Manchester MEN Arena
David Gilmour - 26th May - Manchester Bridgewater Hall
Whitesnake - 27th May - Manchester Apollo
Journey - 5th June - Manchester Apollo
Twisted Sister - 6th June - Manchester Academy I
Art Garfunkel - 19th June - Manchester Bridgewater Hall
The Who - 25th June - Harewood House, Leeds
Red Hot Chili Peppers - 12th July - Manchester MEN Arena
The Rolling Stones - 29th August - Cardiff Millenium Stadium
Iron Maiden - 14th December - Manchester MEN Arena
Iron Maiden - 18th December - Sheffield Hallam FM Arena

Ben Elton - 08/02/06

2006-03-18T13:54:00.000Z

Look no metal! Ben Elton has been a favourite writer and comedian of mine for over 20 years! The Young Ones and Blackadder being amongst the best british comedies of all time. I last saw him live about ten years ago and this was his first stand up tour since. He was still very funny and delivered his routine so fast that the woman sat to my right complained to her partner that she was only catching about half of what he said!

Trivium - 02/03/06

2006-03-18T13:18:00.000Z

Trivium are a metal band who have been really hyped over the last year. Also they were playing the Refectory at Leeds Uni which whilst being Leeds is biggest venue, it usually has really bad sound, not sounding too promising then. However the gods must have smiled upon the very young band from Florida (I believe the oldest member is 19) as they played a blinding show. They were very proffesional for their young age and their sound engineer must have been good as the sound was the best i had ever heard in the refec! I was sso impressed I imediately ran off and bought both of their albums! I will be seeing them again later in the year as it has been announced that they will be supporting Iron Maiden on their tour come December.

The Darkness - 11/02/06

2006-03-15T13:21:00.000Z

The Darkness was to be my second gig of the year, Saturday 11th February, but how ever I was ill and had to miss it (We will not go into my illness here!), But my mate Dave and his mate Angel (who took my ticket!) thought they were great! Justin came on stage in what can only be described as a boob chariot! Shame I missed this one!

DragonForce - 30/01/06

2006-03-14T13:15:00.000Z

DragonForce would be my favourite new band! Classic Power Metal, they rock harder and certainly much faster than any band i've seen for years, and yes they bounce about on a trampoline! Here are some crappy photos from my phone! Oh yes and Buy "Sonic Firestorm" out now on Sanctuary Records, It will blow your mind!!!

Greatest Ever Gig

2006-03-14T12:28:00.000Z

As this is a blog about gigs, perhaps the first thing to do is to say what my best ever gig was! It was Rush at Sheffield Arena on the 10th April 1992 (this might not be much of a suprise to many folks!), swiftly followed by the Rush gig at SECC in Glasgow, Scotland on the 14th September 2004. As many of you know I think Rush are the greatest musical combo in the history of music and It was a long wait of 12 years between gigs, Hopefully it won't take that long again!