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| Working as local crew at 'Britain's busiest venue', you see a lot of shite bands play cack-handed music to kids who need to know better. Last night, I saw the best show I've ever been at in Academy 1. Not the main band (they sucked) but the support, a wonderful bunch of guys called Anathema.
For anyone who's not heard of them, they were biggish about 10 years ago with the Alternative 4 album, but never what you'd call main stream or well know - one for those who know. That's when I first heard them, about 1997. A few purchases and a lot of quality listening time later, I got to see them live in rockworld supporting Mayhem in 2000 (fucking shit place for a gig), and missed a cancelled show in Liverpool that year too (I think). Since then, I avoided listening to them - combined with my life I found them dangerously depressing.
Last night, this band from Liverpool saved my life. As stated, I've been at many, many crap shows with bands that are touring because they can't make money from sales (that's most of them isn't it?), and have accordingly lost many hours (days, weeks, months...) of my life in the pit wishing they would stop, shut up, leave , go away... After a while, the initial novelty of it all wears thin, it grinds through and starts to tear you up inside. Every day becomes just another crap band you don't care about, and it goes on and on and on. Most of the time I can't remember who we had the night before, they're mostly that unremarkable.
Anathema were on stage at 745. They played the finest, most heart rending 45minutes of live music I've heard in almost a decade. I don't have words to convey how good they are. The tunes, the lyrics, the performance, everything. Absolute perfection. Proper musicians, poets, whatever. And it's given me back some faith in live music.
Maybe this is all a little melodramatic, but after working there for this long they literally saved my life.
Porcupine Tree sucked. Never heard of them, never heard them, very disappointing. Pretentious enough to demand no photography, pretentious enough to have a barefoot front man 'giving us a lesson in prog rock'. Fair enough artists need to do they're thing, but totally unconvincing. And they're drum tech guy was a bit of an anus. The main point was unconvincing. Most of their riffs sounded like something ripped off from Tool or someone else worth hearing. I didn't like it at all. They played for 2 hours, after which I wanted to cut my ears off. I understand why people liked them, but couldn't help thinking they should all know better. There are lots of bands that do that kind of stuff better. Maybe you won't see them on tour anymore, but that's no reason to waste hard earned cash on guys putting lots of good tunes in a blender with a badly set up projector. Never mind, the kids enjoyed it.
The best bit was during the load out I managed to have a brief word with Vincent and Danny Cavanagh. Vincent was talking to adlib-Tim, they knew each other, and whist stuffing a multicore into a box I said to him
'er, Excuse me? I just wanted to say I thought you guys were fucking amazing tonight. I was in the pit and it blew my mind, you guys were awsome. Just wanted to say thank you for the best music I've ever heard in hear, before you go.'
'Oh wow, thank you, that's really nice to hear, glad you enjoyed it...'
'yeah man, you almost made me cry, it was amazing'
'wow, thank you, we do try...'
'you were awesome, when are you coming back? You said something about headlining next year?'
'We've got an album to finish but yeah, we hope to be back soon'
'Fucking excellent, I can't wait, good luck and have a good tour - must get back to work, heh heh'
'Nice one man, thank you...'
Wicked.
Later on I caught Danny stuffing his bag into the bus hole and said pretty much the same thing. His response was similar, pleased to have pleased me and talking about a new album and headline tour.
These fellows saved my life and then I got to thank them for it and shake hands later.
What more could you ask for from a night of paid work?
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| If you're the one visiting my dark little cave, at least do me the favour of leaving a message or something other than an anonymous-ish footprint. If that's you in california or where ever the fuck you're from, just leave a polite "hello". I wouldn't visit your your page a thousand times with out saying hi. Cunt. 
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| So, after 7 years calling people filthy carnivores, I'm thinking of eating meat again. My body seems to crying out for it, and I'm thinking I've actually been very hungry for seven years. I think I'm going to have to start small, small bits of chicken and bacon if possible, before working my way back to that fat, juicy steak that's been haunting my dreams all these years.
Seriously, I'm not a hypocrite nor am I really (very) evil. I'm still anti-evil-meat-industry, and want to eat only happy-clappy home made type meat, like you see that River cottage guy on TV raising and cooking. I want to buy it from the people who raise, kill and prepare it. In short, I believe the time has come.....
I WANT SOMETHING'S FLESH!!!!
Seriously, working as local crew and pit security, I think I need it. Maybe its just the man-flu talking (have been working loads in the last week, getting soaked in sweat in the pit and loading out to the windy, cold Manchester night - bad combo, just like last year - all with about 4-5 hours sleep any given night).
I have a plan(ish):
I want to get a couple of steaks, a chicken and load of bacon, maybe a leg of lamb or something each week from the happy-death-campers (still to be researched and sourced), to turn into meaty food for the week: - a roast chicken/lamb on sunday (leftovers for the week, or soup),
- weekly steak night (maybe twice, I can't deny I loved big slabs of meat),
- bacon and tuna on hand to satisfy the urge for something's flesh and help keep muscle building going all week long.
I want bigger muscles damn it! I would have them too by now if not for my stubborn principles. Like I said, I rescind none of the anti-evil principles. But I have to respect my own body too. All in all, its been a good seven years and I've learned a lot about myself etc etc, but its time to do what my body seems to be crying out for. I might actually gain strength and muscle mass and health benefits at the rate my work demands then. Hell, even if I wasn't crew-guy, I think this would be happening anyway. So, I'll try and record what happens when it all goes down. I may be forced to take photos of everything in that very gay techno-record-your-life-as-if-anyone-cares way too many cunts do these days.
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| I'm still here.
Trying to download everything ever.
Found a semi-decent mp3-tagger: Music Brainz Picard.
It works pretty well, but isn't as automatic as I would have liked. Have managed to sort out all my mp3s so far, with correct album, track, artist info etc. Its a decent program, if you know what your stuff is.
Got very frustrated, cos I found it after googling for mp3 identifiers/taggers/organizers and finding a link with some asswipe saying it correctly identified/tagged a bunch or random nameless tracks. No such luck! I had tried another shite app which messed up the files I tried to process, leaving a load of wrongly named files. Have had to identify 10 random 80's Matchbox B-Line Disaster tracks going on length and a few lyrics and re-file loads of acid bath and pig destroyer.
Where can one find something to identify a totally nameless/tagless mp3? Surely there's an audio fingerprint databse somewhere capable of such things?
Bastards!
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| Why, oh why, can I not sleep properly anymore?
Honestly, it takes about 35 hours to tire me out properly now, physically at least, and I still can't get to sleep easily.
Like now, for example.
Worked at Warrington Parr Hall (just down the road from the location of that great profile snap in the corner!) yesterday (is it?) for the Ian Brown gig:
- up at 6am after 3hours sleep
- picked up at academy 7am to ride over to venue with driver +2 colleagues
- load-in 8am
- on way home 1230pm, got back after a bit of a walk back from being dropped off on princess parkway around 1pm; knackered then alright!
- slept ~2 1/2 hours before 730pm when ali got back
- had dinner and back to acad for 930pm pick up
- load-out 11pm-1215am
- dropped off on the far side of umist under mancunian way (!!!)
- picked up by my lover around 145am after walking down to the hands - 1 pint guinness
- no sleep. Bastards.
So I'm sat here at 747am Sunday morning, trying to write some shit down.
My mistake was being hungry. I thought I could sleep but after half hour in bed my belly was roaring... Found some cereal, watched some shite middle of the night tv (why with a hundred or so cable channels is there still nothing to watch at 5am???), not feeling remotely tired. So I come upstairs and sit down here to continue my quest to download all the metal and porn in the world. And I'm still here over 2hours later.
Good news: found out how to make the downloaded family guy season 6 and southpark episodes work by downloading and installing appropriate codec (will be making plenty of vcds to watch now)
Bad news: still not asleep
Great new discovery: The Red Chord
Also great: Pig Destroyer,
Municipal Waste, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Killwhitneydead, Necrophagist, Suicide Silence, The Black Dahlia Murder, etc.
Go on the extreme metal! Proper filthy, horrid, grindy, gorey deathcore music. I fuckin' luvs it!!
FUCKING suck: Bring me the Horizon. They SUCK.
Fucking SUCK.
Just stop now, please, please, for your own safety. Go learn to shave, and make some decent tunes.
I've been using limewire a lot recently, and have hoarded about 8Gb music and 23Gb 'videos' - luaaahvly. Anyone reading this and interested can contact me and browse the collection directly - tjblight1138 at the uk hotmail company. Understand?
Also, have used the graphic equalizer tool in creative media player to make a Down setting (listening to down, thought it didn't sound as good as it should, fiddled a bit and made it sound like my idea of perfect (ha! famous last words you c#nt!) It sounds really nice with all the metal, but i still like the drum 'n bass setting for pendulum etc.
Which reminds me - everyone must get the new Down album - III Over the Under. Fuckin' wicked Sabb'ed out stuff, nice and despairing again. Personally, I felt II lacked the feeeling of NOLA in many ways and I think I've listend to it about 5 times in as many years. The total, black, desperate, suicidal despair was missing. But I think its back a bit more now, albeit with a different perspective and less desperation. Every song on III is about drugs, depression and suicide again. Nice. Makes me even madder that I didn't see them at the acad earlier this year. Bastards.
Even better than that: I'm just about in contact with some worth while old friends, after many years burried in the sands of time and regret!!
- Never thought I'd say it, but thankyou facebook!
To those of you concered (you do/will know who you are) - I'm positivley moist over the whole deal.
As usual, anyone else can get fucked. Fucketh thyself!
PS: up yours. Get a hair cut, cunt.
Seriously though, I will be making a list of victims and hunting you all down
loggin my 'activities' here. Whether you like it or not.
'There's only one way to find out!' 
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