Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch what I suppose is called a film. There are formalities to get through here before I can launch into the review. The tide on the Medway as I drove to the cinema was quite high. I don’t think it was at its highest but it was definitely waay above half.
The next thing is to talk about my rating I gave the movie on IMDB. I changed my mind as I started writing this communication. There’s a guide to these ratings on in this communication. My first rating was pretty good:
Now, I suppose, there needs to be some explanation about this. This film was pretty shit. It was a mindless action movie. I think my score of a 6 was initially because it was quite well done, you know, it looked good and slick. But this morning I couldn’t face keeping this film ranked above half way.
This film is a testosterone fuelled bullshit story about people with egos so big they aren’t allowed to lose a fight on screen. It was bad, like, Bond bad but without the intelligence.
This is a monster of an album. Buy it. Play it. Love it.
I was meant to see Motörhead play in around 1990 with two friends, Smith and KH. That didn’t happen because of a falling out between me and KH. I didn’t go. I’ve heard the show was really good. Oh well. I had to wait until 2013 to see Motörhead live at Download Festival and they were OK but very much a product of their time. This album though captures them at their very best.
I bought this on tape [music cassette] waaay back. I can remember listening to it while I worked at Cossor Electronics in my “gap year”. I had an AIWA portable cassette player with bass-boost and this album was a great kick in the ears. Gap Year is in quotation marks there because I never intended to go to university but things happen, maybe I’ll write about it here.
I think the thing that this album surprised me the most was the elegance with which Lemmy plays the bass and how his rolling riffs and scales really fit the music. I’m not sure I’d be able to hear this subtlety live but in this album it shouts out.
Ace Of Spades – bloody marvellous.
Stay Clean – another great song.
Metropolis – not a bad song on this album.
The Hammer – it’s metal isn’t it.
Iron Horse – better than when Bon Jovi mentioned it.
No Class – say it with an American accent.
Overkill – Often imitated never bettered.
(We Are) The Roadcrew – Just listen to that scream.
Capricorn – Not a unicorn.
Bomber – I’ve not seen the video but I suspect this is when the lighting rig, shaped as a bomber, flies over the band.
Motörhead – This is the best.
Just before the band play Motörhead Lemmy says “Just In Case”. This phrase echoes through my brain, it’s there as a constant catch phrase, I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve written it on pupils’ leaving books in the past and referenced this album in the hope they listen to it. The bass playing explodes out of the speakers and knocks you flat. It’s an amazing song and the rhythm of the vocals makes me smile. I don’t really know what Lemmy sings, it’s not thing – vocals, I leave those to Smith.
Everyone should own this album, even if it’s to put on at the end of a party to get rid of everyone, or to celebrate a great night. Go and buy it.
On Thursday I went to see Men In Black: International. I wasn’t that fussed about the film, I was more concerned about getting out of the 36C heat outside. Inside my house it was hitting around 30C and that’s plainly ridiculous and fucking scary. These events are going to become more frequent due to anthropogenic global climate change and that saddens me intensely, I hope I’m dead before the water wars start.
There were zero films I was even slightly tempted with at my usual place, Cineworld Rochester, and so this time I went to the far-flung Bluewater shopping centre. The car was not happy about starting in the heat [36C] and so initially I turned it off straight away, it made sounds I have not heard before. I tried again and the thing seemed reasonably comfortable so I decided to risk driving to near Greenhithe. I managed the air conditioning in the car so it stayed at a cool 24C eventually. I don’t like being that warm in a car, it makes me sleepy, a steady 18C is more normal but it was a special day.
I’m afraid I can’t give you any news about the state of the tide as the Bluewater complex is in a quarry and nowhere near the sea. I mean, the river is a couple of miles away but I wasn’t going to make that detour just to keep some strangely traditional part of these reviews going. The tide report will return.
It’s about 1km to the river.
More tradition: the IMDB rating and tweet. As is custom I rated the film on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings in this communication. You can see all my tweets and things by looking at the menu at the top of this page.
So, I rated this film as an 8. That’s quite high really but the film gets two extra points just for the air conditioning available in Bluewater and the theatre. It was glorious to enter the building from the car park and feel the cool air and to feel more human again. I don’t think we were made to sweat constantly. I used the Showcase cinema app on my phone for the electronic ticket on there and it worked well.
The seats in the cinema are lovely and comfortable and I was happy with that but my seat happened to have an EXIT sign nearby and it was too bright. It took my attention too much. So, I snuck into the seat next to mine and was in the shadow of the part-wall and felt much happier. I would not have liked to sit in my original seat for the whole film.
I really enjoyed the film. It looked good and I even chuckled out loud in certain places. The plot was pretty thin, essentially the same as the previous films. But, it was cool in the cinema and the film was fun.
Just one thing though. All the London street scenes seemed to have an EAT restaurant in them. Like there was product placement. The Lexus was obvious but I’m not sure EVERY street in London has an EAT. It might do, I’ve not been that observant every time I go there. Wikipedia says there are 75 EAT locations in London.
Yesterday I took an evening trip to see The Matrix at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I had spent a good portion of the day already aware of the tides as I visited the Redsand Forts and while it was high-ish tide when the trip started it was half tide on the way out when we returned to port. The tide at Rochester was about half again I think when I got to the cinema.
The showing was at 20:00 and I got there about twenty minutes before then. I went for a walk along the wharf. It’s that or buy sweets to eat and so I opted for the healthy option. I’m in a bit of a healthy phase and hoping, once again, to adjust my routines to be more healthy. I’ll probably write stuff here someday about that, I’ll see how it goes first. At the other end of the wharf there was a new development of houses along the river’s edge. They look nice and had lovely balconies and views but I couldn’t help thinking that in less than one hundred years they will either have been destroyed in the Water Wars or flooded by rising ocean levels. I am not optimistic about anthropogenic global climate change.
After seeing a movie at the cinema I rate it on IMDB and I was looking forward to rating this film until I watched it. There will be more about my battle with memory below the embedded tweet. If you read through the movie reviews on this site you will be able to spot the time I learnt how to embed tweets!
Hmmm, WordPress, my website editing software had a update about a month ago and I am learning the new features. I’m not sure if that embedding will work. I’ll wait and see once this page is published. [It worked fine, no need to edit anything]
The scoring of this film as a SEVEN is controversial, I know. Especially if you read my guidance communication on the rating system but I guess I’m trying to break the Matrix [ha fucking ha]. The thing is I was hoping I would love this film. The 27 year old me loved this movie, I bought it on DVD and I’m sure I watched it a few times, I even went to see the sequels and they were fucking terrible films, really terrible. I mean they were really really bad. I went with friends to see them at the Odeon in Maidstone.
Right, here we go.
I wanted this movie to be amazing, I wanted it to blow my mind and when I was 27 it did. Bullet-time was a filming style invented for this movie. The whole look and feel of this film was ground-breaking. It was an amazing action film along with the philosophical grandness of wondering what if we are in a dreamworld or the product of other people’s dreams or in a computer simulation – each of those is equivalent I think.
The things I remembered about this film were:
Trinity being amazing at the beginning
“I know Kung Fu”
The lobby scene
Dodging bullets
The things I had clearly forgotten were how fucking dull some of the philosophical bullshit scenes were. God, there were times in this movie when I just wanted it to finish. I think that’s the problem with nearly every genre now taking lessons from the Matrix and how to make films, the Grandmaster gets killed by those he trains.
Looking at the film now there were lots of things that don’t work in the plot and timing. I will admit though that 1999 was a pretty good time to be alive, just think:
No 9/11
No Iraq war
No Afghan war
No GW Bush
No 7/7
No Brexit
No Trump
To get around the “dying in the Matrix” problem the writers just said that if you die there your mind dies and your body can’t live without a mind. Which is bullshit. They could have just used another excuse, they could have said that you become metally unstable and we kill your body. Similarly getting injured in the Matrix means that you get the same injuries in real life, this is poor writing but I guess you need to have some form of risk involved once you are in the Matrix. I think that just entering a different world would be managed perfectly well by the mind, we do it every night. Unplugging the link into the Matrix shouldn’t kill you either.
The action scenes were pretty good but the Lobby scene seemed much shorter than I remember. I wasn’t that impressed. This is mostly to do with me having watched another twenty years worth of films in an age of computer graphics and near photorealistic graphics. It isn’t really a problem with the Matrix but it just looked slow and I was unimpressed. This is a shame and more a problem with me than the movie.
Fuuuck films with an oracle or wise old woman or man. What a lazy crock of shit those plot devices are. I hate it. Of course, that person needs to be black or they wouldn’t have the same credibility. What I sugest you do is look through all movies with wise old people and see what their current role in society is.
More fuuuck films which use a prophecy. I’ve been reading books recently that have a theme of a prophecy and it’s lazy fucking bullshit. Our species seems to live with the idea that we can predict the future and so some wanker somewhere will have written down what is going to happen. We love the concept of agency and we can’t cope as individuals if we understand that the shit is just random. Nope, we have to have prophecy. We have to have a way of explaining the world and how some people become the heroes or gods. Fuck that shit. It annoys me so much.
“Neo – you are the one”. Fuck you.
How about just Neo being a hacker and then considered someone who can cope with being out of the Matrix. Then he could just develop into an amazing leader. All this destiny bollocks makes me want to cry. It’s a throw back to the days when we didn’t understand how stuff works. It’s a way of giving the human race hope for a future that won’t happen. It’s calming to the global psyche. It’s fucking bullshit that’s what it is.
I hope that now I’ve alerted you to this prophecy shit you will spot it in future and start to downgrade those stories. I do know they are popular. I do know that most of the world relies on that shit but it’s time for reality. All this pophecy shit does is reinforce the idea that some people are born better than others. It keeps the poor poor and the rich/powerful wankers. Our entire societal structure is formed so that only some will be in charge and they will do all they can to stay there. They love this prophecy chosen-one bullshit. Just look at Boris Johnson and tell me he doesn’t believe he should run this country. You see what these stories do to people?
I do note that the Matrix had many scenes without music and I admire that. It was nice to have the stark contrast so that when the action happened the music worked pretty well. I was struck by the idea that people who dress in black and look “alternative” are the dangerous ones. As someone who lives in that world I don’t think it’s right for society to cast those people aside and see them as dangerous but things will change slowly. At least I hope they will, it seems that the world is getting more intolerant recently due to the leading politicians of our time.
I don’t know whether it was the soundtrack or the cinema or where I was sitting in the cinema but some of the scenes’ sound seemed balanced poorly. There were a couple of times I couldn’t hear the speech because of the music and I couldn’t hear the music at the beginning of the Lobby scene. This was a shame because those are important parts in my memory of this film. Along with sound issues fuck the person who seemed to be wrestling with a loud plastic bag during all the quiet bits of the film. Obviously they have no empathy or they would have waited before making that much noise.
Overall this film left me slightly sad that it didn’t meet my memories of it. I saw it as a tired slow film full of philosophical-bull. I understand that it was mind-blowing and ground breaking when it was released but not all groundbreaking films remain amazing, some slowly go away and get remembered for their effects rather than their plot.
On the way out I overheard someone mention they might watch the two sequels. Jesus, that’s beyond the call of duty. I will NOT be seeing them. They were worse than shit.
It’s Ozzy isn’t it! You don’t need much more than that. This freaky person who once bit the head of a live bat during a concert. This man who took copious quantities of drugs and who invented Heavy Metal. This man who still writes great music. This god of metal.
And then you see him on a reality TV show and it shocks you just how fucked he is. His body is knackered and you can actually see him thinking. The show highlighted just how much his wife had managed him and got him clean, eventually.
Whoever your heroes are they will let you down eventually. This downfall will be quicker if you see or meet them in real life. Never meet your heroes. I used to think Ozzy was a god, now he’s a broken man.
I’m pretty sure this was the first Ozzy album I bought. There are a couple of others but I think I got this one on music cassette. It’s a brilliant album. It’s very well produced and has excellent songs on it. I’ve loved the rolling bass lines keeping the rhythm section going and the creepy sound clips over the top. There’s a certain beat to these songs that is a slow but heavy boom that means you can feel the urge to move and bounce along.
Mr Tinkertrain – excellent. Mama, I’m Coming Home – tear jerker. No More Tears – brilliant opening, the riffing is ace. Hellraiser – damn good. Zombie Stomp – written with the audience in mind. A.V.H. – darn good.
I’ve enjoyed this album for many years and it still pleases me, which is no mean feat.
This was the first Bon Jovi album that was released during my fandom. I’m not sure if I had already seen them live, I’ll check at some point. I remember driving with friends down the Wembley Arena and seeing Bon Jovi with Dan Reed Network as support in around 1990. Right, this album was released in 1988 and so I was into Bon Jovi then but I hadn’t seen them live.
I really loved this album. It felt mature but still great fun. I have just, slightly embarrassingly, realised that the band’s name shortens to BJ, which is brilliant but I can’t believe I’ve only just noticed that [I wonder if the Pom has?].
Lay Your Hands On Me – brilliant.
Bad Medicine – brilliant and includes the lyric which I have found most fascinating: “You’re an all night respirator wrapped in stockings and a dress”.
So, here’s the thing. I could end this album right at this point. I know that’ll be controversial given some of the songs that follow:
Blood On Blood, Homebound Train, Rise Cowboy Ride, I’ll be There For You, 99 In The Shade.
These songs have never really done much for me. That’s just how it is and I do understand it’s a massive character flaw. When I saw these guys last at Twickenham they played “I’ll Be There For You”, it was the most boring song ever, key changes and everything. I hated it.
This album is still great, even though I turn off after about ten minutes. Everyone should own it.
Yesterday was a little busy but it was one of those good-busy days where everything seemed positive and fulfilling. In the morning the collektive known as DBL-MF went on a photoshoot. It was pretty good fun. In the afternoon I traveled to see this film at Rochester cinema and in the evening I had a run.
I did note that as I drove to the cinema the tide was quite high, I couldn’t see the edges of the inlet which was dredged just over a year ago, and when I returned home the tide was about at its highest.
After the film I rated it on the IMDB site, there’s a section here about rules concerning rating films and you can see that communication here. I then tweeted the result, through the wrong account initially, but I corrected that this morning.
I pretty much enjoyed this film. I even laughed out loud in the cinema and that is quite a rare thing. I would have liked to have seen a more political push in the discussions about the monologue but that’ probably wouldn’t have kept the humour at the correct level. I enjoyed this film although it was very much a feelgood movie. It made me laugh and really enjoy watching the characters develop.
John Lithgow’s performance was fantastic. He’s such an amazing actor and it’s strange to see him looking old he’s always much younger in my head. I think I remember that one of the first films I saw him in was called Raising Cain. I think he played a twin or person with multiple personality disorder. It was spooky and amazing. Then he appeared as a baddie in Cliffhanger, I think and also played an astronaut/scientist in 2010. He’s always been there in the background.
I know he had a long run on TV with 3rd Rock From The Sun, which was very good fun, and I watched quite a lot of those but I always felt as though he was an actor I discovered and tracked over the ages. He was brilliant.
As we approach the other classics in the “N” section of this mammoth album review journey we settle into thoughts about Nevermind. You know what, I just don’t know. In the early 90s this sounded amazing and remarkable, a real game changer. It turned metal from overblown historical narratives to being about feelings and angst.
I’m also worried that it doesn’t stand the test of time and might be a bit shit. If you’ve heard The Pixies you know what I mean. I haven’t played this for decades. I guess it still scares your parents though.
This album means a lot to me. I originally had this on tape bought as a birthday present [I think] by a friend from my village. Lisa and I both went to air cadets and our friendship grew over the years we spent together. Towards the end of my cadet career we would give each other lifts to the squadron. 309 was based in the nearest town to the village and we had to get there somehow.
Lisa bought this tape for me. We listened to it together in the car and I loved the rawness of the sound. As I grew up further it amused me that this band were put together pretty much to sell things at a shop on the Kings Road. Brilliant marketing and hilarious at the same time. Punk being used as an overt advert for the shop Sex. Brilliant!
Not all the songs are brilliant but a good proportion are and the production is excellent. Again, it’s amusing how well produced this album is given the whole punk pastiche [not sure that’s the correct word there, I might have just mentioned a Danish pastry].
Holidays in the sun
Bodies
No feelings
Liar
Problems
Seventeen
Anarchy
Pretty Vacant
All amazing songs. All really well written and produced. This is a one album band, everything else was shit. This album though, it served them well.
This does what it’s meant to. It scares your parents. It makes them worry for your sanity and the future of humanity. It’s ingenious.
Then, while I was at university, in possibly my second year, Lisa died. Suddenly. While playing football. Fuck. My dad told me. In a bar near Goodge Street. “I’ve got some bad news” he said. Lisa was dead. Fuckin’ dead. At about 21 or 22. They didn’t ever find out what happened. She was fit, played sport and ran all the time, smoked all the time, was great to be around.
The funeral was fucking terrible. The church was packed. People sat in the aisles. I think we all, the cadets, wanted to run away afterwards, but her dad asked us to stay a the wake. It was shit. I think we were all numb. We pondered going to look at the coffin in the hole, I said we shouldn’t, let’s remember her the way she was, we didn’t look. That night we all went on a pub crawl around Sawbridgeworth and drank many round to Lisa.
I used to go and chat to her grave for about ten years after she died. I just went there to think. I might have said stuff, but I also know that’s just stupid because she was dead and gone. Once you’re dead that’s it. Your gone. But it felt like the right thing for me to do at those times. Even my mate Rich and I once went to speak to her after a dining in night at 309. We left our girlfriends with my parents at about midnight and just went to chat to Lisa. Fuck knows what the girls thought about that. It’s just what we did.
I have a newspaper clipping about Lisa dying folded inside the CD case of this one. I moved it there from the music cassette when I upgraded.
Life’s shit quite often and then every now and then you get a bit of happiness. Then you die. Some of us die before the others. I miss you Lisa.
Lisa Died
We’re so pretty, oh so pretty, we’re pretty, va-cunt.
I don’t remember buying this album and I suspect it was another failed attempt to get into The Who. I can tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it, or if I did it was decades ago. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what tracks are on here, although I could guess.
I’ve just looked at the track listing and I can honestly say I recognise about half the song titles. I guess I’m still not a Who fan.
Yesterday I went to watch the Pokémon Detective Pikachu movie at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. As I drove along the wharf-side I noticed the phase of the tide and it was waxing, slightly more than half high-tide at that time.
I rated this film on IMDB and then tweeted the result. You should read this communication about the rating system, although I have been aware it is still flawed I don’t have the time currently to look into it.
So, I really enjoyed this film. Disregarding the megalomaniac aspect of it, this was what a film should be. There were so many multicultural touches that I’m not going to get them all. The cast were a mix of peoples from around the world. The cities looked marvelous and contained buildings from around the world. This whole film had a futuristic feel to it, the type of melange of the world which probably gives right-wingers the cold sweats.
The Pokémon were cool. They were realistic enough to make it all believable. The story wasn’t great, but overall this film just hit the spot in a world polarised by the politics of hate.
I was given this album as a gift during early February 2007, I’m pretty sure it was on my stag do. Anyway, as much as I love Rammstein I haven’t listened to this album as much as I should’ve. I’m not sure why but I seem to prefer the other albums.
Sometimes the older stuff works best for a band because you know the songs so well. I think that’s why I find it hard to get to know the newer albums or ones that are newer to me. I guess I also don’t like bands who keep the same music style? I’m not sure about that statement actually. Here’s my thinking:
I love the early Iron Maiden stuff but the albums after Seventh Son are a little boring. I think it’s because they didn’t really change their sound? Or maybe I just grew out of Iron Maiden, I’m not saying it’s wrong to keep liking them I’m just saying I changed.
I still love AC/DC even though [apart from Let There Be Rock] all their albums sound the same. This contradicts my experience to Iron Maiden so I don’t know what it is about AC/DC or Maiden that makes my response to their new music so different.
Metallica changed their sound over the years and I haven’t liked anything by them since Garage Days Re-Revisited. I mean there are two songs on the black album that are OK but everything since then I’ve not liked. Maybe it’s because they went “mainstream”?? I don’t know. Maiden are pretty mainstream, as are AC/DC, and I still kinda like them so who knows what’s going on. I guess you like what you like.
Since 2009 I’ve been into Aggrotech or Hellectro music and I really enjoy it. The canon isn’t as large as for metal and so I haven’t tired of the music yet. I don’t understand the causation route here. I can’t decide if Andy and I share the same interest in music genres because we have the same music tastes and are friends anyway or whether the fact that we are friends also influences our music tastes so they are the same. There are some small differences in what we like and obsess over but by and large our tastes have grown together. Odd and probably not that odd I guess.
So, Rammstein. I first heard them when a friend, Sara, gave me her CDs of the first two Rammstien albums and I loved them. I remember listening to these CDs in around 2003. It took a few year for me to get to the point of seeing Rammstein because I had a phase when I didn’t go to gigs and concerts, but I am definitely in a music phase at the moment and one that’s lasted about six years so far.
This album is a classic but it just happens to be one I’ve not listen to that much.
This is an album which takes me back to the early 1990s almost straight away. I’m pretty sure I bought this in a record shop in Portsmouth. This means I bought it around 1995/6.
I remember spending time at a mate’s flat after being out on the beers in Bishop’s Stortford. He was working as a house master in a private school and we would often rock up to his accommodation and sometimes we’d have the Narcotics Suite on in the background and I remember being very impressed with the music.
I also remember being in a car with my parents and even though they were fine with all my heavy metal and thrash I asked them to put this CD in the player and listen and I don’t think they quite got it. The music has complex beats and I think it broke them slightly. I have loved this album for over twenty years. When I saw The Prodigy last summer at the M’era Luna festival it was one of the best gigs I had ever seen.
Break and Enter – a deep heavy intro to the blistering sounds of The Prodigy.
Their Law – Fuck ’em. Shout and scream this one at the establishment.
Full Throttle – a fast ride to hell I reckon.
Voodoo People – magic people. I think I remember this one from the live show. A guitar based sound to give you full on dance beats.
Speedway – It’s a race isn’t it? Sounds like the soundtrack to a Ridge Racer game, but better.
The Heat – Still great.
Poison – The intro to this, with the spoken word and then the wa-wa sounds makes me shiver. It needs to be loud and hit you in the chest.
No Good – ha ha, this one reminds me of a relationship I was in once. Every now and then this song went through my head before I’d had enough and left.
One Love – lovely.
Narcotic Suite x 3 – a beautifully written selection of songs which will make my spine shiver.
I liked this album before I was into my current electro-aggrotech-industrial phase. It was a forerunner that seemed “OK” for a metal fan to like. I think I used to be worried what people would think about me when I spoke about music and now I don’t care what you think. I like what I like and am what I am.
So, Nirvana were massive. They were huge and considered a great influence over the 90s. But then he died and I heard The Pixies and suddenly I wasn’t that bothered by them.
I really liked the Seattle sound of the early 90s and I saw Alice In Chains a few times. The soundtrack to the film Singles is a super album. Nevermind was amazing and had a raw power that was a complete turn around from the thrash and metal that had come before. But, I’m afraid that one good song on a pretty good album doesn’t heroes make [in my view].
I look back quite dispassionately from the lofty heights of 2019. I can see what they did but I can be almost unbothered by it all.
I bought this album, I played it but for me I think it lacked the power of Nevermind. The vocals have a haunting sound and this was the first of the Unplugged albums that made MTV a fortune. I can’t remember the last time I played this album. I can’t see a time when I will play this album.
Nirvana does make me remember my third year at university. You see you have to read this boring, lofty communication to get this far before you get a nugget of glory days waffle. Back in the day we held “welcome” dinners for each of the engineering departments and we asked freshers to come along. I attended all of these in my third year as I was in the “Departmental Societies Officer” role within City and Guilds College Union. I t was pretty much my duty to go along and drink and be merry.
The disco at the dinners was run by the people from Imperial College Radio, a group to which I also belonged having been part of the organisation since my own first year at university. There are stories about time at the radio station that I should record on this site. So, ICR ran the discos and kept pointing out that I knew all the words to the Wham! songs, which was slightly embarrassing but at least it meant I got the chance to influence the choice of songs.
When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came on I would run to the dance floor and then begin to be a little aggressive with the metal style “dancing” I guess. There was one dinner where, at the end of the song, I was the last man standing on the dance floor. Everyone else had decided it was best to get away from me. I look back and think my behaviour could have been considered anti-social but I also recognise that times were different and people probably cared less then that I do now.
Being in the pit at a metal show is an act of consensual violence to a certain extent. Everyone there wants to have a good time and jump around and bounce into each other. However, at the same time everyone looks out for each other and if someone falls we all help them up. I’ve helped up people I’ve been running into and I’ve also been helped up when I’ve fallen. There are levels of behaviour that are considered OK and there are definitely upper limits. It’s all unspoken but works. If you don’t like the level of violence then you leave and no one cares. I’ve left pits in the past, where I’ve considered the violence beyond my limits and I’ve stood on the edge and watched.
Most concerts I’ve been to just involve the crowd jumping around and maybe creating a circle. I’ve been to gigs where we’ve run into each other in time to the music and in the right environment that’s pretty good fun. I’ve been to gigs where the pit seemed to consist of a few people rugby tackling each other and I thought that a stage too far and so I left that one. In that same pit I saw someone throw a punch, this was beyond the unwritten rules and that chap was dragged out and handed over to security. There are rules you see, you just have to know what’s going on.
When I think of the pits I’ve been in, there has been the following bands where I’ve been controlled by the music:
I put this album on yesterday while I did some work and it was OK. It’s got a very 80s sound. My first encounter with this band was when I was in secondary school and someone pointed out the bass playing of Billy Sheehan. It is very fast. I can’t really imagine anyone playing guitar that fast.
This album is good but not memorable if that makes sense. It doesn’t really bother me. They had another album called Lean Into It I think, which I reviewed in January.
You know we need humour in our lives. I know Monty Python more from the albums and audio than I do the TV shows. I have seen the vision versions but I haven’t watched as much as I should. I have listened to these albums over and over, especially Live At Drury Lane. This album contains all the studio versions of the greatest Python songs.
Buy it. Listen to it. Research the times and history to get an idea of what goes on in the world, the song “Henry Kissinger” testifies to this fact of satire and humour being used to “take it to the man”.
This is known as the black album by most fans I think and it is the first Metallica album I bought straight from release rather than playing catch up with their discography. There is one good song on here and one semi-good song. The rest I would not play.
Sad But True – this is a pretty heavy amazing song, although slow. It crunches through you, especially live.
Enter Sandman – this is designed to be a single and went massive. It’s an OK song.
The rest of the album I could not tell you about from memory. This is interesting as when I saw Metallica at Donington in 1991 these were the only two songs that they played from this album, even though it had just come out.
I bought this on tape and I’ve just checked the NAS drive and amusingly I haven’t even updated my collection of this album to a complete digital version. I only have three songs from this album in digital. I also have Wherever I May Roam, but let’s face it, that’s a shit song.
This album marked a major decline in my appreciation of Metallica. There was a slight decline after “Justice”, but this one hastened the break up. Metallica went massive after this album and became mainstream. That’s when I stopped liking them. I’m not sure which way around the causation goes, whether their music changed and I stopped liking them or whether they became mainstream and so I stopped liking the music.
I did go to see Metallica play in Earls Court in about 1995 [just checked and it was October 12, 1996] and it was quite good but the new songs are shit and I really struggle to get past that. The show was filmed as the DVD Cunning Stunts. In that DVD one of the stuntmen is described as the “burning man”, not by his name by the band. This guy set himself alight over the complete tour every night and yet the band didn’t know his name. I guess that’s how it goes being a rock star but I didn’t like that.
Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch Hellboy. I pretty much went just to spend a couple of hours being entertained as I had some spare time. Of course, I noted the state of the tide and it was low.
Medway, Rochester
From the picture you can see the mud flats or banks of the river closest to the camera and these are normally hidden at high tide. Also, on the very left you can see a barge just sticking out and the is one of two which live in a freshly dredged area of the mud bank. Even more exciting is the existence of cranes on boats. Seriously, there are cranes that work from boats, how amazing is that?
I should probably explain a little about the film now. I rated the film on IMDB and tweeted my result. There’s a communication here explaining the rating system.
This film was pretty poor. I’m not sure what it was about really. Something to do with the rightful heir of the UK I think. The film starts at Pendle Hill in Lancashire and something to do with witches and King Arthur [who most definitely wasn’t a real person, like Robin Hood wasn’t]. Then we head to Mexico to see a vampire, which is fine.
Over the course of the movie London is laid to waste and that seems a reasonable metaphor for the current state of politics. There was some fighting stuff and a man who can change into a killer leopard at a whim, but who takes drugs to stave off the change, but manages to change back to human without any trouble. I don’t know. This film was pretty shit.
I did like Hellboy’s crown of flames hovering above his head in the last fifteen minutes of the film, that was pretty cool.
I bloody love this album. It’s proper 80s cock rock and it’s amazing. I had this on tape for many years and oddly the music cassette is still in a cupboard in the kitchen ready to be played on a non-existent cassette player. Years ago I would have had a CD/Cassette/Radio in the kitchen. I mentioned Tesla in this communication years ago! Also, in March 2014 I noticed the tape in the cupboard and wrote about it within this communication. It is still there:
Tesla Tape – taken today
I still don’t have the heart to remove the tape and put it somewhere else. All my music cassettes are in the loft and this one is now a memorial to that portable format.
So, this album is playing while I type and it is brilliant. Lots of excellent choruses along with memorable hooks. It’s very much like a Bon Jovi album [one of the good ones] but slightly less commercial. I have enjoyed playing this album for over thirty years and I think it will continue. Well done Tesla.
