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My tickets, not for sale though
“Tickets, buy sell or trade” “Any spare tickets?”, I’m sure most of you have heard those lines muttered by some filthy looking touter when attending a gig. They come in packs and occasionally work in teams (picture them hi fiving each other after a successful sale, it makes the imagery more sweet). Most of the time you simply ignore them like a drunk girl in a party but when you’re at the venue with no ticket in your hand, suddenly they become a vital portal to gigdomhood.
Sometimes they do humour me (and usually are a point of conversation to people you’re queueing up with) and last night was no exception.
Sh sh sh shout out Louds
Hopefully it’s not too late, 33 days ago I went to see a band called Shout out Louds, they’re from Sweden (sudden influx of Swedish bands I know). I’m never good at explaining what a band is like (without having to say they’re like x and y) so check last.fm for a cooler explanation (not to mention I’m only talking about the gig really, and hopefully getting you folks to give them a listen and buy their music).
They were playing at 229 club in Great Portland Street (and I can assure you, the street it definitely great!…. for a while anyway). I arrived there after work and had a lovely Starbucks Blueberry cheesecake since the venue wasn’t open just yet. I like starbucks cheesecake, its so rich and creamy 
After that ever so random trip to Starbucks (you can always find one if you follow Google Maps your heart) I returned to the venue to do some boring queuing up, most likely reading a book (Northern Lights I think) to past time. Once in the venue I was finding an area with light to continue the reading, the place was pretty huge, not to mention there were two venues, this event was holding two gigs simultaneously which you had access to, the other venue was a bit shit and small though so I stayed on the main venue.
On the first of October I attended a lovely Lykke Li gig, I bought the tickets from ebay (face value mm) and was keen in seeing her in action. The venue was lovely and always had amazing lights for awesome shots (such as the ones from Okkervil River and Tilly and the Wall). The music was all kinds of awesome, if you haven’t heard her yet then check this little video I posted earlier. The atmosphere was chilled and since the venue was mainly for clubbing and whatnot, it was a lovely place to listen to some relaxing music as well as enjoying the crazy elegant moves of Lykke Li. It’s nice shooting close up shots of the artist, sometimes it was a bit too close but it meant you could really capture the expressions and what not of the artist.
It’s fun when loads of bands get together 
One my of friends introduced me to a band called Das Pop, mainly because they were from Ghent (where he lives), they’re a mish mash between belgium bands (Soulwax, Millionaire etc) and europop, and did I say they were from Ghent? The thing with me is I tend to like a band after I see them live, usually that’s the quickest way for me to judge and like a band (not saying the only way mind), my friend himself hasn’t really got any of their albums but highly rated them when he saw them live, so why not? The tickets were pretty cheap and it was near from where I worked.
So yeah, Hoxton has a lovely venue, the lighting is quite limited but the acoustics aren’t too shabby. The support band wan’t too shabby either, I was caught sitting at the front (they had a lovely cushioned bench placed right at the front) reading when suddenly some guy approaches me and introduces me as the lead singer…
Part 2 of this epic adventure that is V Festival 08 (though I doubt you have more anticipation for it now since it happened quite a while back haha). Mainly a photo dump of the actual gig. Anyway, the lineup sucked so badly that all I saw were Sugababes, a bit of Stereophonics and Muse, so lets get straight down to it
Welcome to my lovely two part post on V Festival 2008, thought I’d separate the social part of v festival and the gig part of v into two posts to make things easier to digest, granted there’s not much to talk about in the gig section so it will probably be photo flooded whilst this one will most likely be content orientated. So yeah, after being guestlisted for the lovely v festival at Staffordshire on a Sunday, I had arranged all the travel and accomodation a few weeks in advanced to ensure things go well (”well” being i can actually get there and have a place to stay), I booked a lovely hotel at the Wolverhampton Quality Hotel (where quality is oozing from the hotel so much that the word quality popped into the name of the hotel, that’s how awesome it was!) and some tiddly train rides to Wolverhapton (was about 3 hours to Wolves but 2 hours back, silly trains). Fact was I was going for the day and wasn’t really keen in heading home early or camping (that wasn’t allowed anyway what with the wristbands and not having weekend passes). The hotel seemed like the best (and warmest) option and I was surprised that it was only £48, including bed and breakfast. I had booked a holiday for Monday to ensure I had sufficient amount of rest once I arrive home (besides I don’t think work would appreciate me coming into work all muddy and bloody from the festival (mm soft skulls).
Me on the piano, old photo
Everyday I spend at least 30 minutes on the keyboard, jamming around, learning new songs and just goofing around. I couldn’t remember the last time I recorded something on it so I decided I’d just make something up randomly on the piano. It’s not amazing, just playing a few random chords, juicing out the Dmin and then improvising randomly on my right hand. I really like the Dmin chord so I thought I’d make a piece on it.
It’s a raw piece which i recorded on the first take so apologies for any mistakes, I’ll pretend that they were intentional ;). Has been a while since I tried doing something original, quite sad when you think about it. Next time I’ll consider having a theme behind the piece before playing, that way you can see if you can guess what it is.
Hope you enjoy it. You can literally tell me what you think on the chat box 
Teehee I never knew William Shatner did a spoken word of common people. Now the reference of doing the real slim shady in spoken word makes total sense.
