When I heard that Pearl Jam were playing at the Hard Rock Calling festival, I immediately bought tickets without caring much for the rest of the line up. To be fair, the other bands we saw put on a great show – Expatriate (who I suspect was Stacey’s favourite), Gaslight Anthem (who I’d never heard of but was well impressed with), The Hives (who replaced Wolfmother after they pulled out due to sickness) and Ben Harper (Mr Charismatic). But for me, it was always about seeing Pearl Jam!

I was quite impressed with their set list, which I felt was a great mix of older and newer songs. Most impressively, they played for over two hours, which is huge for a festival. We started off the show somewhere in the middle of the crowd, until Aubain, Wes and I tried to bury ourselves in a bit deeper. We managed to make it maybe 30 metres further in, but the wall of people eventually became too difficult to penetrate, so we settled in and enjoyed the rest of the show. Yes, the days of fighting the crowds to get to the front are well and truly over, but I’m ok with that!

Given that Ben Harper had played right before Pearl Jam, I was somewhat expecting a guest appearance during PJ’s set. And, given that Eddie had come out to perform a cover of Under Pressure with Ben Harper during his set, I was even more confident that the favour would be return. And I wasn’t disappointed! Ben Harper waltzed onto the stage to join the band in playing Red Mosquito – and if there was ever a Pearl Jam song made for Ben Harper’s slide guitar, this has got to be it!

Anyway – here’s a short video of two panoramas from within the crowd (from our first spot and then our second). There’s an outside chance that it includes some awesome singing on my part, too.

View the Hard Rock Calling photo album on Picasa.

Wow, it’s been a busy week! On Thursday night, Al and I headed up to the HMV Forum in Kentish Town to see Coheed and Cambria, who are touring off the back of their new album.

We came in part way through the opening act, whose name I missed (as usual) though on reflection I think it may have had “Monster” in it. I wasn’t a fan (too screamy, with no melody) but Al didn’t mind it.

Coheed came on around 9 PM and played a fantastic set of about four songs from their new album, plus loads of tracks from their back catalogue. They didn’t say much between songs, and even though I would have liked them to talk a bit more, this is typical of their style so I wasn’t too surprised.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take my earplugs, and it was loud in there; my ears were suffering afterwards.

Coheed and Cambria are definitely not a band that everyone will love, but they’re easily one of my favourites and I’d snap up any opportunity to see them play live. The journey back from Kentish Town to Chiswick was long and boring, but it was totally worth it!

As you may recall, we were supposed to go and see Powderfinger play in April this year, but they had to reschedule their concerts due to the volcanic ash cloud. The shows were rescheduled for the Friday and Saturday night just gone, so for the last two evenings, my home away from home has been my favourite concert venue, Brixton Academy.

The support act was Bob Evans, who Louise informed us before the show is actually Kevin Mitchell, the lead singer from Jebediah. I wasn’t all that familiar with his music, but he sounded quite good on stage – though given that he’s one man on acoustic guitar, he had a bit of trouble filling the entire venue with sound.

On both nights, Powderfinger came on around 9:30 PM, and both times opened with Burn Your Name. This was one of only a few tracks that they played from Golden Rule; overall, these were definitely “Greatest Hits” concerts, with tracks like Already Gone, Thrilloilogy, Sunsets, On My Mind, Lost and Running, Nobody Sees, Bless My Soul, Waiting For The Sun, My Happiness, Passenger, Don’t Wanna Be Left Out, and My Kind Of Scene.

The band seemed a lot more relaxed on the second night, and focused on just having a good time up on stage. The set list was mainly the same as the first night, but they had a few substitutions – I was stoked to hear them play Love Your Way, which is another one of my favourites. They also put a “tag” in the middle of On My Mind by cutting to a few verses of Piano Man Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones, before cutting back to finish the song.

Another highlight from night two was Pick You Up. They had played it on the first night, with the disclaimer from Darren (one of the guitarists) that “heaps of you probably won’t know this song, because it’s so old” – but of course, everyone did know it! On the second night, Bernard talked about how supportive everyone around the world had been of the band, but that (outside of Australia) they always had received the best reception from the crowds in London. It’s probably because there’s so many Aussies here! They dedicated the song to “all those people that have come from the other side of the world”. Bernard gave everyone a knowing look when he sang the line, “When you are far from home” – which of course was received with loads of applause.

Both nights they did two encores, and each night they finished with “These Days”. It seemed a fitting way to say goodbye to London; after 20 years together, there’s no doubt that things turned out nothing like they’d planned.

I meant to take more video of the concert last night, but unfortunately I forgot to charge my camera battery, so I only got the last minute of These Days before the battery died.

On Tuesday night after work, I headed up to Camden with Lea and Dean to see Birds of Tokyo play at Barfly (for only £6.50 a ticket!). We grabbed a few Red Stripes (or cider in Lea’s case) before heading upstairs to see the second warm-up band – Mujeres de Barcelona. They were an absolutely crazy Japanese three piece, with the tiniest female bass player that I’ve ever seen (as opposed to the gigantic female bassists in most of the other bands I see?). She can’t have been more than 5 foot high, and the bass guitar looked massive in her hands!

(Apologies for the photo quality; I only had my phone camera with me, and it doesn’t do a great job in low light.)

Credit where credit’s due; she was great, lead guitarist/vocalist was freaking amazing – though I had no idea if he was “singing” in English or Japanese. It was such a weird experience.

Birds came on around 10 PM (!!), which unfortunately meant they only played for an hour and a bit. They didn’t play my favourite song (The Baker’s Son), but their overall setlists was quite solid, and included at least four tracks from their forthcoming album. It sounds like it’s going to be their best album to date; I’ll be buying it as soon as I can get hold of it! Unsurprisingly, most of the crowd were Australians, and most people seemed quite chuffed with the band’s performance.

Barfly was a great venue too – it was a little bit too loud for such a tiny room, but there can’t have been more than two metres between me and the main stage, then Andrew Goddard walked straight past us after coming off stage! Cool!

There’s absolutely no way that you couldn’t have heard about the cloud/s of volcanic ash which have forced the closure of much of the airspace in the UK and Europe. There’s an even lower probability that you’re pronouncing the name of the guilty volcano properly – “Eyjafjallajokull”. I’m going with, “EYE-ya-fah-HEE-ta-cool”, and chances are, I’m probably right. Well, actually – probably not.

Uncle Martyn called us on Sunday evening to check how the ash cloud had affected us, and I have to say – it really hasn’t! Since we had no plans for travel, life had basically been trolleying along as normal. We did see the digital displays on the M25 reading “Heathrow Airport Closed”, but that’s really about as close as it comes.

Sure, some of our friends like Todd, and Lea and Dean, are stuck overseas somewhere – but I hardly feel sorry for them; they’ve all finished up at their respective jobs and are on party patrol! In fact, given that travel insurance is probably now paying for their holidays, I’m actually a little envious!

All that changed today though, when Eyjafjallajokull delivered us a personal blow. One of our much loved bands – Powderfinger – were set to tour this week, and I have tickets to see them on both Wednesday AND Thursday nights. But since all the flights to the UK have been cancelled, they’re stuck in Brisbane, and have had to postpone their shows!

Denied!

The rescheduled shows are now set for June 4th and 5th – a Friday and a Saturday night. And, though I’m gutted not to be seeing them this week, a Friday and Saturday night concert actually works out much better for me anyway, as it means I only have to go one night after work, and I get to sleep in both mornings afterwards!

Ha! Take that, volcano!

Where does the time go? Todd and I went to the Karnivool concert last Monday and I’m only now finding the time to write about it! Goodness me!

Anyway – it was only October last year when I last saw Karnivool perform to a very limited (but sold out!) crowd of 300. This time, playing at The Relentless Garage in North London, they doubled their audience capacity, and still ran out of tickets well before the show!

As expected, the performance was fantastic – this is one of those bands that constantly amazes me with how well they play live. While I’m watching, I often try to isolate the music from each individual instrument, and for each one, I’m always impressed at how well it’s being played. I felt a little sorry for the warm-up band because their singer was pretty ordinary – especially when compared to the almost pitch-perfect singing of Karnivool’s Ian Kenny.

It’s hard for me not to compare this performance with their previous one, given how close they were together. I definitely enjoyed them both, and I think the set list was pretty similar for the two of them, but overall their first show really stands out as the better one for me – mainly due to the sound quality. I’m not sure if it was the venue’s fault, or if the sound engineers weren’t as good for this show, but The Relentless Garage seemed a bit washed out in comparison to the Angel Academy.

Overall though, Karnivool have become one of my favourite acts to see live, and I’d recommend them to anyone. Do yourself a favour and get a copy of Sound Awake – you won’t regret it! (Well, if you don’t like progressive metal as a genre, then maybe you will regret it – but you can’t blame anyone but yourself for your poor taste in music! Heh heh…)

On Sunday night, Kristy and I joined Dean and Leanne for what was undoubtably one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to: Karnivool. They played at the O2 Academy at Islington, however it was in the upstairs venue which I’d never been to before (let alone knew that it existed)! It’s very small and intimate – maximum capacity is only 300 people – which meant no matter where you were standing, you had a great view of the action.

Kanivool are a Perth band who’ve been touring the UK as support act for Skindred; however on Sunday night, their roles were reversed – Skindred came out as a bit of a surprise and played as the support band for Karnivool! And my what a surprise it was – if you’ve never heard any of Skindred’s music you should check it out. Imagine if Bob Marley joined a heavy rock band, and that’s pretty much what you’d get…

There was one other support band called “Forever Never” who were far too loud for the little venue. All I could hear was distortion – and that was with earplugs in. I was glad when Karnivool took the stage about an hour later.

Karnivool’s songs are generally quite progressive (typically 8 minutes in length or longer), with multiple “stages”, often with differing time signatures. They’re so complex that I had trouble believing that they’d be able to play them convincingly live; however, about one minute into the first song, my doubts were erased – these guys are awesome musicians!

There was three songs that I was really hoping to hear them play – Deadman, Cote and New Day, and they did all three of them! I was one happy fanboy.

gerrod.com rating: 10/10.

After having quite a run-around to get tickets for Pearl Jam, I was especially looking forward to their concert at the O2 Arena, and on Tuesday, all our waiting finally paid off!

My only worry was that the tickets I had bought off eBay would be fake and they wouldn’t let me in – but thankfully, this was not the case! In fact, it was quite the opposite – the tickets were actually pretty good!

Gomez – another band who Kristy and I are both very fond of – were the opening act, so really for us it was two concerts in one. They played a short set consisting mainly of songs from their latest album, and also a few old favourites such as Silence, and How We Operate.

Pearl Jam came on around 8:45 PM to a momentous applause, opening with their classic song Release. They played a two-and-a-half hour set, consisting mainly of songs from their older albums, quite a few B-Sides, plus a few previews from their upcoming album Backspacer.

The show was simply brilliant! The highlights for me were Alive, Footsteps, Yellow Ledbetter, and by far the best version of Crazy Mary that I’ve ever heard.

I managed to record a bit of the show on my camera, and was surprised by how decent the quality was. Check it out:

Time – 3:16, Size: 22.1 MB

Full set-list

Release, Animal, Corduroy, Why Go, Eldery Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Immortality, The Fixer, Even Flow, I Got ID, Rats, Got Some, Whipping, Light Years, Insignificance, Black, Life Wasted, Blood

Encore 1: Supersonic, Hail Hail, Footsteps, Love Reign O’er Me, Do The Evolution, Alive

Encore 2: Better Man, Crazy Mary, Leaving Here, Porch, Yellow Ledbetter

Ever wondered what a national air guitar championship would look like? Well, so did Todd, and somehow he convinced me that it was something that I had been wondering, too. So on Friday night, he and I, along with Al and Becks, rocked (heh) up to the O2 Academy Islington to check it out.

And, as it turns out, an air guitar championship is pretty much exactly what you’d expect it is – a bunch of people on stage jamming to music, on air guitar. Each contestant had 60 seconds to show off their moves, after which they were judged by a panel of dudes who were nowhere near as cool as they thought they were.

Still, for a tenner, it was a decent evening of entertainment! Here’s a sample of some of the acts from the night:

Time – 0:56, Size: 6.4 MB

The first guy is the ex-national champion from the UK; the second act was “sudden death” for the two finalists; the guy in the black shirt with pink writing was the winner.

A couple of weeks ago, Al and I went out to Brixton to catch Faith No More playing at the academy. I must admit, I’m not the worlds biggest Faith No More fan, however there are a lot of their songs I consider to be a classic, and given this – along with the fact that Brixton has to be one of the best venues ever, due mainly to the sloping floor – I was happy to tag along.

The warm-up act was easily one of the most forgettable bands I have ever seen. At one point, Al said to me, “What’s with that chick?” referring to the lead singer; unfortunately though, it was, in fact, a bloke. But I had to let him off the hook – the way he was dancing and the clothes he was wearing made it rather ambiguous. It was also the first time I’ve ever seen a band actually booed off the stage – it was harsh, but fair!

Faith No More came on to an eruption of applause. It was their first gig in something like 10 years, and judging by the reaction from the crowd, they had been sorely missed.

If I had to summarise the gig in one word, it would be “loud”. I was wearing earplugs, yet at times I still had to cover my ears to dampen the noise. I think this was mainly when Mike Paton (the lead singer) was yelling into a microphone – through a megaphone.

As you can see, the noise meter on my iPhone tops out at 120 dB. Each time I took a reading, the needle went straight to the end of the display, and didn’t move. I’ve never seen it do that before, it usually bounces around a bit before finally reporting the “average”. Yes, this was definitely the loudest gig that I’ve ever been to, and I felt extremely sorry for all the hardcore fans who are still convinced that earplugs ruin the sound.

But, credit where credit is due – it was an excellent concert. With such a plethora of hits at their disposal, they could have played practically anything and the crowd would have loved it. Definite favourites for me were Midlife Crisis, Stripsearch, and Be Aggressive.

The commute home was a bit of a nightmare due to all tube lines being down (tube strike), so I missed the last couple of songs in order to save myself having to get a taxi. But I walked out extremely satisfied, so no real complaints! gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.