How many people would regularly attend both the Royal Albert Hall & the Walkabout? Not many. If any.
Okay – “regularly attend” is a bit of an exaggeration, but there has been a fair bit of juxtaposition over the last couple of weeks. Although I’ve only been to the Royal Albert Hall once – that wasn’t enough so I did just today book two more evenings there, and have vague plans to attend some kind of classical music thing there in April or so. And I have been to the Walkabout twice over the last month, I think – which was more than enough.
Since last time – I saw Snoop Doggy Dogg. That was… , well, it was Snoop – live. I went to the O2, had dinner at a french restaurant while waiting for the gig to start – and seriously thought that Snoop was in the restaurant as well. But eventually I realised I was just being a racist – “all braided-hair tall lanky cool-as-can-be african americans look the same to me”. But anyway, had myself some nice moules mariniere and wine, before entering the Arena. Tried to buy myself some Snoop ‘merch’ – but ended up with a ladies t-shirt. So ladies – if you wear a size “L” – and want a Snoop ‘skinny whitey’ – let me know. I then discovered that the O2 serve full sized bottles of wine, even if they are plastic. So got myself some red red wine to go with my gangsta rap, and proceeded to sip on that, while reading my ebook. Then some drunk, and I suspect really rather drugged, couple came up and molested me. Somehow at the end of that, I lost a rather large glass of wine – which gave me justification to buy another bottle. And then Snoop D-O-double-G came on. I had a pretty sweet seat – but of course as soon as the Doggfather came on stage, everybody stood up – so I had to as well. Although I did retake my seat on a few occasions, usually to have a bit of a relax while he was playing one of his many tracks which were preceded with “this one is for the ladies”. But yeah, overall – a pretty sweet gig, exactly what I expected/hoped for. Snoop being Snoop, doing some classic hits, and a couple of covers.
And that brilliantly ridiculous night set the tone for the next week. The next morning – I woke up at about 5am (so a total of 4 or 5 hours sleep since downing a couple of bottles of wine) – to head to the pub, to watch rugby. I managed to watch both quarter-finals on that morning, although my memories of the actual games are a little blurry. At one point, the barman did suggest I have a coffee or something instead of another beer. And told me I wasn’t allowed to sleep there (I was just trying to get 10 minutes of rest between games). But eventually – both games over, and I got in a taxi to head to work. Yep – there was some kind of super-emergency brewing, with the CIO taking a personal interest, and the Vice-President of Operations in the office – and a guy who was brought in for the day because “he’s the guy who writes books on this stuff” – and me, after a night of Snoop, very little sleep, and a morning of rugby & beer. But eventually I was more useful than the specialist brought in, which unfortunately meant he left at about 3pm, while I was stuck in the office until 8pm. And eventually left, very very tired. And as yet, unpaid for the day.
But I struggled to get a little sleep that night – before getting up the following morning at 5am, to again go watch some rugby. This time though – heading to watch it with Dom in his living room, all civilised like. But where does one get a taxi from at 5am? Well – if you’re me – then you live around the corner from one of the most famous nightclubs – Fabric – so I figured that at 5am on Sunday morning, there is bound to be taxis there. And yes – but also many drunk/? people – so I walked past, feeling unable to join any queue/group of such people. And then down the road – a voice called out to me “taxi!?” “Yes”, I thought – “taxi” is what I need, but “taxi” is not what you are. For in a small private car, a dodgy guy was calling out to me. But I figured, yeah – sure. I got in, and quickly but subtly made it known that I was not actually a half-awake uncoordinated drunk/? idiot on his way home. Although I was actually a half-awake uncoordinated blurry mess for reasons solely relating to waking up 5 minutes ago – I managed to insinuate that I was not an easy mark. But it all turned out alright – the guy drove me to Dom’s, even put on the rugby game when it started, and we had a chit-chat regarding that – and he seemed alright. So yeah – I fully recommend getting into an unlicensed-taxi/strangers-car in the wee hours of the morning. And leading on, after that potentially disastrous situation dissipated, the two rugby games were also successfully negotiated – although again, the details are all a bit blurry. I’m really rather happy that the semis & final are at much more civilised times.
Sunday morning out of the way, I headed home – had a nice nap, and then headed off to Hackney for some live music – Iron & Wine doing an acoustic gig. Luckily – some very nice quiet acoustic folk. In fact – for about half the gig, I stood at the back, next to the bar – for easy access to the wine, and enough light to read by. And the other half – took my seat, and watched the nice man with the beard (which seems to accentuate rather than distract from his forehead” play his guitar and sing his nice songs. All terribly civilised – in fact, too civilised for the nice man, who continuously complained about everybody being too quiet and polite.
And then it was Monday – which would normally be a welcome rest. And it nearly was, except my current client had started to go nuts, trying to get me to do as much as possible before they kicked me out the door. And then that night – I was to see Iron & Wine again – this time the “full-band” performance. Which he had promised to be a heap louder and more raucous. Which I was curious about – because I don’t think having additional supporting musicians, and electric instruments, are going to transform quiet folk songs into stadium rock. And sure enough… the full-band performance was still good, but kinda bizarre – with a lightshow, and Sam himself seeming to think he was playing some kind of loud rock show – while playing all these slow quiet (but nice) songs. All in all – I probably could have skipped it, after seeing the acoustic one.
And then, Tuesday. Another day of struggling through work, and then my first ever time at Royal Albert Hall – to see Spiritualized. Which I wasn’t sure about – not having listened to the music for years. But I think I grabbed the tickets just to get to see Royal Albert Hall. And yeah – not disappointed. Not the best seats for watching the show – right up the top – but good for just getting an overall view of the hall itself. And the gig – started off slow – good enough that I wasn’t disappointed – and initially even quite impressed, but then not much else. Jason ‘Spaceman’ sitting on a stool, playing the songs – with a backing band and a full chorus or two supporting him – and some quite good lighting effects and what-not. All quite good – but it become slightly ho-hum through the middle, with quite a few slow songs (I think he played the entirety of his new album?). And then the encore – wow. Pretty sweet. Just song after song of good music, a great show, and just an incredible atmosphere.
After Tuesday, comes Wednesday. Wednesday was a nice relaxing day of work, fencing, gig. Work included (from memory it was this day) – a vendor coming in to do an installation, the day after having been accidentally forwarded an email (by my project manager) in which I referred to this guy having “wound me up”. So yeah – that was a nice delicate situation. Then fencing – where I had to protect myself from being stabbed by an epee. And then quickly rushed home, and off to the local little gig venue to watch We Were Promised Jetpacks. Who despite their terrible name, aren’t actually too bad. They are one of the current glut of good indie-rock bands pouring out of Scotland. The lead singer looks like a chubby petulant child – with a mouth that looks like you could drive a bus right into it when he yells. By this time, I just stood at the back, watching all the pretty young things in their “twee” clothes with disdain. But yeah – good gig. I suspect the lead singer really is a petulant child – and I suspect he is going to get chubbier – with people raining critical acclaim upon him before he’s ready, and generally just turning him into a dick. But decent gig anyway.
And that was the last gig for a while – which was actually quite the relief. Until I remembered work drinks on the following night – which were substantial. And then rugby on both Saturday & Sunday mornings. But that all went off without too many hitches.
And now it’s this week – and a whole new exhausting chain of events has started – but that can wait until later.