If Kristy and I were to list the artists or bands that both of us absolutely love, Imogen Heap would likely be number one on the list; and it’s equally likely that there’d be absolutely no-one following her. This is probably for two reasons:

1. I have a strong preference for what Stacey affectionately terms, “Gerrod music” such as Rise Against; and
2. Kristy has a strong preference for what I affectionately term, “terrible music”, such as Death Cab for Cutie.

As such, it saddens me to know that we’ll probably never meet Imogen Heap in person, as I feel as though she needs to know what an honour she has to be at the top of our shared musical loves list.

Anyway, when we found out that she was playing one of the nights that we were in Melbourne, combined with her not coming to Brisbane for some reason (what gives, Imogen?) we made sure we got some tickets. Thank goodness for Kristy’s parents who kindly offered to babysit Oscar for us again!

Imogen Heap is one of those artists that most people would say they’ve never heard of, and yet she has a number of songs that most people probably know – the most famous of which is Hide and Seek. She uses a lot of effects and electronic processing throughout her music, so it was really interesting to watch her play it all live – suffice to say, she spends a lot of her time running between instruments, seamlessly singing along the whole time. She must be an amazing multitasker!

We both loved the way that she interacted with the crowd, telling us all about her music, or where she was when she wrote certain lyrics, or the reasons she liked using various pieces of equipment. As Ben put it so well once (talking about Dido in fact, but the point is the same), she “opened herself up and invited you to get to know her a little better as she shared the inspiration for most of her songs”. It really added a personal touch to the concert, making it that much more enjoyable.

It was a fantastic show, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Hopefully the next time she’s touring Australia she’ll make it up to Brisbane so we can see her play again!

Last week was a very busy one, and this one hasn’t been much different! Here’s a few highlights from the last week and a half.

Quiz night: On Friday night, we went to the second quiz night since our arrival back in Australia (the first one was mid-November last year, and was won by Steve). Rules of quiz night state that the winner must host the next quiz night, so Steve stepped up to become the Quizmaster.

I thrived at the TV Theme Song round, but I did very poorly at Australian Sporting Celebrities. Michelle nudged out Ben by only 1/2 a point to become the quiz night winner!

Garage sale: Mom and Dad, Mel, and Kristy and I hosted a huge garage sale at Mom and Dad’s house on the weekend. It’s amazing to see how dedicated some people are! We advertised the sale would start at 6 AM, though we knew we were being optimistic thinking people wouldn’t show up until then! In fact, the first customer arrived at 5:15 AM, and quite a few came shortly after that. As I was helping one lady to the car with her purchases, she remarked to me that this was sale “number one of 21″ for her, just for Saturday! Crazy!

Though we sold heaps of the goods on offer, we still have a lot more to go. Glassware in particular was a poor performer! Mom and Dad are hosting round two of the sale this coming weekend (Saturday only!), and we’re hopeful to get a different, more glassware oriented crowd along.

Jimmy Eat World: Jason, Susan, Ben and I went to The Tivoli on Saturday night to see Jimmy Eat World (third time for me). They did a great job to balance some tracks from their new album with a lot of their old favourites. A bit more crowd interaction would have been nice, but every band is different on that front!

I once again find myself listening to a lot of Jimmy Eat World tracks since seeing them live again, so clearly I was impressed! I’ve found that I’m especially loving their slower tracks since the concert – Invented is currently on high rotation for me.

We are flying down to Melbourne on Friday night to attend Nathan and Kelly’s wedding, and then staying for a couple of nights in the city following. This will be my first time to Melbourne since I was about 10 years old, and I’m looking forward to finding out if their coffee is as good as they’d have you believe! Any recommendations for places to go (especially baby friendly ones) and things to see gladly appreciated!

Sometimes, life seems to pass by so slowly and yet so quickly at the same time. It’s a condition that I like to call “The Thomas Paradox”. Generally, our weeks are pretty quiet (slow), but the weekends are a hive of activity (fast)! Make no mistake; this is in no way a complaint! We enjoy having lots of quiet nights at home through the week in order to prepare us for a busy weekend!

Anyway, the last week just gone was no exception to the rule, with scarcely anything worth a mention until we arrive at Saturday morning. We kicked of our weekend by joining The Johnsens and The Priebes for a delicious brunch at Brother Espresso. (Not so) secretly, we had arranged the brunch in order to pick everyone’s brains for some activity ideas for Aubain and Ingrid’s impending visit (less than two weeks! Eeeeeeeee!!!). And we got some winners! A&I are in for quiet the treat!

Bright and early on Sunday morning, I trolleyed out to the airport to pick up Jason and Susan. They’ve been adventuring around Singapore and Vietnam for the last 15 days or so.. Tough life for some! I don’t know what the highlight of the trip was for the two of them, but for me, it was definitely driving along the new overpass from Toombul out to airport drive. Wheeee!

So that brings us to Sunday afternoon, when Ben and I hit West End for a cocktail at The Lychee Lounge followed by dinner at Sitar. Their Tikka Masala was delicious, but it repeated on me all night.

Anyway, the main reason we were in that neck of the woods was to see Eddie Vedder play his last night in Brisbane on his solo tour around Australia. His previous two gigs had received excellent reviews so we had very high expectations, and I’m pleased to say, those expectations were met!

Eddie has such an awesome voice; this much should have been fairly obvious to even the most casual Pearl Jam fan. But as Ben put it – seeing him play solo highlights what an excellent all-round musician he is, knocking out fantastic tunes on the guitar, ukulele, and even the mandolin!

The show consisted mainly of Pearl Jam tracks, lots of tunes from the Into The Wild soundtrack, plus a few other covers that I’d never heard before. Highlights of the evening for me were Speed of Sound (sounded much more haunting when played live and acoustic), Arc (Eddie recorded all the backing tracks live, using a loop delay type of machine, and then sang over them), plus the duets he sang with Eliza Jane Barnes (she’s got a fantastic voice!).

Lowlight of the evening was the row of knobs in front of us whose behavior was so unusual it’s hard to describe. I guess you had to be there. Still, it did little to dent what was otherwise an excellent concert and evening out!

It’s fair to say that I’ve been to a number of concerts over the years, and though it’s hard to choose a single favourite, I’d definitely put the first Muse concert I saw very close to the top. So, when Al – henceforth known as “Legendary Al” – offered me an early Christmas present in the form of a ticket to see Muse play again on Sunday night at Brisbane Entertainment Centre, I was champing at the bit to attend! Truth be told, I didn’t even know they were touring!

So first things first – there was one major disappointment to the evening. Al and I thought that the support act was Biffy Clyro, but as it turns out, they’re supporting all of the Australian shows except for Brisbane. This was a total bummer, as I’m a huge fan of their work! Instead of Biffy Clyro, our opening act was Dead Letter Circus, and to be fair to them they were quite good – but they weren’t the band we were expecting.

Anyway, Muse exploded on to the stage around 9 PM, with each of the lads standing on a platform about 20 metres above the stage, each in the middle of their own cage-like tower. The towers were all projecting various images throughout the concert – lots of the time, these were live feeds of the lads playing on stage, overlaid with huge amounts of video processing. Plus, the platforms were raised and lowered throughout the show, so that the band members could wonder around on stage, or so that the instruments could be changed (Matt had a full size piano on his platform for one track!).

Did I mention the greatest laser show that I’ve ever seen?

Yes, it’s overall a bit hard to describe, but here’s a video that may explain it better than I can! Unfortunately, it was taken on my phone, so the quality isn’t amazing, and the sound was far too loud to record successfully, but don’t let that put you off!

It was so much more than I’d have imagined it would be, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I suspect we have a new contender for “best concert ever”!

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…)