Music – Page 2 – bloggingIT

Jamming

Steve came over the house last week for a ‘jam’ as Nick the lightweight bailed out of poker.

An interesting experience, as not only does Steve purposely tune his guitar in a manner that I have to shift the keyboard down by three semitones, but also – it’s just something that I’ve never really done before.

And Steve said he enjoyed it as well. When he plays with his band, it’s an all-guitar affair. Apparently, playing with a keyboard is more odd because of the range and the two-handedness of it.

But alas, I can’t play Super Mario Bros. with the sound effects on the keyboard (well, not yet!).

Blood on the Rooftops

I’ve been trying to learn how to play the classic Genesis song for the last couple of days. It’s slow going predominantly from the (relatively) massive 5-key chords that need to be played.

It seems that my hand wasn’t quite designed to work that way!

In the meantime, the pace is getting better and going back to songs that I could play reasonably well I’m finding is a walk in the park!

With a substantial amount of practice I may even be able to add another song to my repertoire! Until then, I’ll just have to cope with an aching right hand (no jokes please).

Still, it also means I’m regularly revisitng the ‘Wind and Wuthering’ album which in my opinion is a severely underrated Genesis album, harshly dwarfed by its predecessor.

Philly’s Farewell

Went to see Phil Collins last night. Pretty good show, played the hits that everybody wanted to hear (sans any material from ‘Both Sides’), had a good light show, and was on top form.

I wouldn’t mind knowing where he gets his boundless energy from. I could do with some of that. Especially as I’m walking around today coughing and spluttering like an old man with a croaky voice like I should be on a ‘give up smoking’ ad.

The only downer (and I’m not sure who’s fault it was), is that either the PA was totally screwed or the acoustics in Wembley Arena are awful. There was about a half-second delay coming from the back wall which carried all the high-end sounds. This meant that throughout the various songs it sounded like either someone was whispering in my ear, an AM radio was being piped through the PA, or there was such a mish-mash of sound that it was tough to pick out the mish-mash that I wanted to hear!

Oh, and Wembley’s staff dealing with the merchandise stands were terrible! That was a fiasco worthy of another story.

Nevertheless, it takes more than minor things to get me down, and a great night was had by all.

MiserableNorthernBastards

Whew! It’s been a long week. What with driving up to Scotland, back to Sheffield and back to Ramsgate in a week. Needless to say, I am a little worn out

I went to see Peter Gabriel at the Sheffield arena on Wednesday. The show was great, but I had one word to say at the end:miserablenorthernbastards.

I’ve settled on eMNoBs for short.

Was it too much to just get in the mood for them? It could have almost spoilt my enjoyment of the show, and did to some extent

Without wittering on about how I came to this conclusion, I would point out that it’s not a fluke. I happened to obtain a pair of free PG tickets for Wembley yesterday, and bombed up there like a well known Meatloaf song.

I was sat in row ‘Q’, probably further away from the round as at Sheffield (I was on the ground there), and really picked up on the vibe of an excellent atmosphere. The applause was louder, the fans clearly enjoyed it more, and there was a great ‘feel good’ feel at the end of the show.

It’s a shame. But I think that this evokes a new challenge to those boffins who like to calculate the formula for a perfect chip.

How do you measure peoples’ miserable-quota? And more importantly…
How do we keep Emnobs out of concerts?