twisted

It says something of my companions that they didn't think it was twisted enough (I wasn't expecting Masque of the Red Death).

We were at the Barbican for a pre-Christmas touch of songs and merry mayhem. A diverse gang of musos and actors performing yuletide fayre, with Jarvis Cocker, Patrick Wolf, the festively attired Smoke Fairies and many others. The evening had been arranged by David Coulter and a fair few of the band had overlap with Black Rider - the Tom Waits extravaganza.

Our little group had hurriedly consumed too much cider by the time it started and there was some inopportune giggling during the opening moments. I'd expected this to be a something of a 'one-off' convergence of musicians and so I was expecting a few hesitations between numbers as the band had to re-plug or check the running order. A kind of village hall performance within the Barbican. So I guess I was generally entertained throughout, although during the pitstop the discussion was about the level of twistedness.

So with my expectation already set to 'reasonable' for this, when the second half featured Matthew Robins' shadow puppetry from flyboy and the planet of the ghost snowmen, I was there.

Unfortunately, also in the second half, Jarvis Cocker was rather a disappointment with a half hearted 'God Rest Ye' and a song about slush. Did I detect some sheepish embarrassment on his face for not preparing properly? And Patrick Wolf had plenty of cheers but sang without really involving the top notch band in his performance. There were plenty of Wolf-styled followers in the audience, with bohemian styling being rather prominent. I assume these two appearances were to bump the names in the performer listings rather than really showcase anything.

Overall, I'd class the show as a mixed level of performance, with strong Bonfire Madigan performing slinky cello accompanied raconteur wonders.

Also delightfully edgy cabaret performance by Mary Margaret O'Hara, who seemed to be operating at several speeds during her set -"that just fell off the bone" she commented after leading the band through a slow song where she was revving on stage like a ferrari before cutting loose with the whole band on an uptempo song.

Sandy Dillon zizzed onto stage in a silver jacket and shades and worked a Christmas song with the Smoke Fairies in accompaniment. Then a small keyboard accompanied song and again the band picked up the pace to follow the leader. The Smoke Fairies also hooked up their own guitars for a while and sang to their own tunes. Foy Vance ended the main show with a couple of numbers with reasonable takes on Christmas shopping and the music of the retailers.

My account has little in common with the actual running order and I've left out a few performances. Whether or not it was all good, and whether or not it was fully twisted, I felt suitably entertained by the time 'Fairy Tale of New York' closed the show and we all headed for the drunk tank.

mash

Usual December acceleration is occurring. From the month being a distant concept I've now realised we are half way through it towards Christmas and it just gets more hectic.

Others muse about reading novels, composing songs and taking extended vacation, whilst I'd settle for a quick read of - er - Metro at the moment.

I've probably spent about half the month away from home and that continues until this weekend, although I should get back some time on Saturday.

This mashed potato is very comforting.

clanger

A small celebration of a TV legend today, with the passing away of Oliver Postgate, a childrens' television show developer with a canon of work developed in a particularly British way. Early watercolour cardboard cutout stop animation developed in a cow shed and later three dimensional sets for knitted puppets filmed outdoors under whatever lighting conditions prevailed.

I'll include The Clangers as a favourite, complete with the Soup Dragon, the one Cloud with a mind of its own and the home knitted idealism of the whole series.

I suspect many would hear Oliver Postgate's voice, whether in Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine or Bagpuss and be reassured of a quirky and interesting tale where nothing really harmful would happen.

Away from small films, he was also a political activist, railing against nuclear weapons, urging thought about the environment and debating this year on the economic woes.

But I'll stick with his inspiration as a storyteller who could create many strange yet positive worlds for children of all ages.

Update : I see Bobkat has a similar thought also with a great video extract about the iron chicken

Will Young concert

A few of us were supporting Julie's Will Young road trip on Sunday. A gang of us were split between a box on the Grand Tier level and some prime seats front centre but not in the piece where everyone stands up throughout the performance.

Our seats gave a good view of the very mixed audience (unlike the rather standardised adjacent Slipknot audience). The crowd for this concert were already in a frenzy when Honey Ryder came on and simply mentioned Will's name. By the time the main stage was set there was rampant enthusiasm from the devoted fans.

A wash of dry smoke through the auditorium to ensure the lights would create good effects and then the band and finally Will took to the stage. Instant adulation and the front rows pushing towards the stage with all manner of cameras, cellphones and the odd packet of parrot food.

Will sang from his recent album - Let it Go - mixed with a good collection of well known tracks from his earlier works. The band played well with typically a couple of songs and then Will engaging in banter with the audience.

Will was a strong entertainer moving the mood up and down, sometimes leaping around the stage, encouraging the 'palm of hand' audience to stand and clap for some numbers and to sit quietly for others.

Highly likeable as a person, entertaining to listen as he rambled into various stories and remarks. Some discussion of who was out of the TV talent shows, stories about his recent appearance in Top Gear and a revelation of his tattoo.

As a performance, Will soared through the notes, could rearrange the songs with a wave of his arm to the tightly grooving band and showed that if the album treatments were not raw or funky enough, he could raise the temperature with ease.

The last album is referred to as a 'break-up' album by some that know the back story. Its certainly very listenable and has some great tracks. That the title track 'Let it Go' was a B -side is more a reflection of a mad record industry that nowadays doesn't seem to know what to do with good pop music. There also seems to be some kind of Radio 1 blockade preventing him being played according to Jeremy Clarkson.

This concert was an hour and a half of pleasing music, well connected with the audience and all performed faultlessly. Great entertainment, topped with a rocking version of Grace (Will and Grace?) and then after a short break the encore of a santa-hatted version of 'Strange' and finally 'Leave Right Now'.

Go see the upcoming arena tour.

iMac television

My first hotel room with an iMac as a television. Quite clever really, it had a menu system to play television, DVDs, CDs, plug in an iPod and simply use it as a Mac. Very useful and one box instead of 3 or 4.

The hotel was also running an exhibition of Led Zeppelin album art, from the creator Zacron. It was interesting to see early inspirations for LZ3 and the spinning wheel. It could all be inspirational to anyone creating, say, a book cover.

And, of course, I couldn't resist putting rashbre central onto the hotel room telly, just because I could.

scream if you wanna go faster

Shrieks around rashbre central on Friday night, with the adjacent Xmas Fayre in full swing. It's Tuesday now and I'm just offloading a few pictures from my camera to help me remember the rather hectic last few days. As well as partying, we've had various get togethers as well as linking up for part of Julie's musical road trip.

And a Weihnachtsmarkt on Sunday too, so I'm well stocked with Gluhwein, Stollen und Nußknacker.

tweetdeck

Today's space capsule hotel should have bypassed my current broadband problems, but the special scratch n sniff pass code to their wi-fi didn't work properly. I'm making do with low speed until I have time to phone Bangalore again, although they already promised to restore full speed.

At least the hotel's decor matched the Enterprise party requirements over at JLP's.

Meanwhile my bandwidth deprivation means less distractions. I've noticed that the 140 character twitter messaging is now progressively eating more screen real estate. I really must decide which client to use. I started with twitteriffic, dallied with alert thingy and currently use tweetdeck, although it seems to take over more desktop space and presumably more bandwidth as more options are switched on.

no pebble unturned

A short seaside interlude this morning after spending last night in a brightly coloured hotel reminiscent of a space capsule.

Today I was really supposed to be elsewhere but it seemed a shame to leave the place without a short wander along the seafront.

At this time of the year the chilly but sunlit beach area was pretty much mine, with saner souls probably sitting indoors or shopping.

all the mice go Clang

I joined the fledgling Devoted and Disgruntled ning a few days ago, as it gathers critical mass towards the session in January. Nings are a kind of online collective without the flying sheep and vampires. I'll leave D&D for another time.

It's interesting to see the fabulous Spike Milligan poem gradually turning from nonsense language into vocabulary. With Nang as street for 'cool' and Nong meaning 'twit', we're gradually getting the whole "Ning, Nang, Nong" thing covered. Perhaps Spike knew this whilst his tea pots were jibber-jabbering.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

buzz crackle

I was called this morning from Bangalore about my errant internet link.

As I was on the road, it wasn't very easy to explain the exact symptoms. I've been escalated now though and have another two phone numbers and a secret pin code for special access to the network specialists. I also discovered that the phone has now stopped working for outgoing calls. This requires a separate call to the phone specialists.

In the meantime, I'm using a mix of hotel, blackberry, iPhone and chocolate bourbons to get some sort of fragile access.

Pass the crocodile clips.

eleven for a secret never to be told

My entire digital communications infrastructure collapsed this afternoon. I was working and then my Thinkpad stopped in mid sentence and went into some sort of deep thought. The nearby Mac sent out a row of little exclamation in triangle icons and the nearby printer/fax lit up about twenty little lights.

Hmm.

Line failure. Reboot the router for the first time in months. No difference. It has to be a BT fault.

Call them. Oh, silly me. I needed a different number.
Call them again.

Hello, Pradeep in Bangalore. Very helpful as he explains how I need to uncable and move the ADSL router to a different part of the house and did I happen to have a spare microfilter and a BT431a to RJ45 adapter?

After 45 minutes, it was declared to be a line fault and I'm told that an engineer will be in contact in the next 4 to 48 hours. I'll be on the road throughout that time, so I hope its working again when I get back. Its taken out Sky and BT Vision as well.

I thought the two magpies I spotted yesterday were supposed to be 'for joy'? Maybe the ten in the same tree five minutes later has a different meaning?

santa sighting

My first 2008 Santa sighting today, outside rashbre central.

I'm guessing it was the naughty/nice reconnaissance run but it was hardly low profile - all the navigation lights were on.

I only managed to get one photo above because of the extreme speed.

I know its still early, but I suppose the countdown has begun and NORAD tracking is back online - more modestly, around our way there's a Christmas Fair on Friday.