The Wizard Rock Special Post

Talking of Harry Potter I want to announce my new Wrock-centric blog. Now that I’ve admitted publically my love of Wizard Rock I feel the need to talk about it almost incessantly. The quantity and quality of Wrock bands interest me far more than a majority of mainstream music these days, with the exception of my eternal favourites.

So if you’re interested in knowing more about Wizard Rock and what’s going on in the Harry Potter fandom’s own music genre then please check out my new blog using the link above or the one in the sidebar.

Music, Music and More...

So the Peter Doherty concert came and went without much excitement to be honest. The venue was interesting to say the least – Proud at Camden which is based in Stables Market, an old horse stables and hospital. The market is a nice place with an interesting selection of shops (read freaky in Mrs H3’s terms) and Proud is an art gallery and bar during the day; bar and music venue at night. The bar itself is interesting enough, playing an eclectic choice of music, the stables having been kept to provide pockets of privacy, each one with a widescreen TV to show the football (Chelsea were playing that night – sorry can’t remember who they were playing as it wasn’t Birmingham and it wasn’t a very inspiring game). We chose to sit in the one with the black leather seats and the big speakers – which I guess would be called the music area. There was also a room with a table football machine, one with a pole and disco floor and several others that I can’t really remember what was in them but you get the idea. Water was £2 a bottle which I guess is pretty standard for these sort of places.

Neither Mrs H3 nor I had bothered to check the venue out until the day when I looked it up on the net just before leaving work and discovered that the concert was scheduled to run until 2.30am. Now obviously that gave us a huge problem as we were parked at the O2 and the last tube leaves at about midnight and it’s a bloody long journey back to Mrs H3’s house on the night bus which would have meant probably getting home at about 6am. We sat in the bar watching the football and hoping that Peter would grace us with an early visit with club music after, but alas it was not to be.

He finally made an appearance at 10.45pm and launched into a similar set to the ones we’ve seen him do before, accompanied by Graham Coxon on a couple of songs and also – new to us – by a pair of ballerinas. Now I’d love to say that the concert was the best we’d ever seen, just Peter and his guitar (plus the guests) in such an intimate venue – and to be fair he was just as good as he’s been every other time we’ve seen him, but the ‘music room’ that the concert was held in was awful and severely depleted our enjoyment of the concert.

Now I’m usually quite happy in the smaller venues, although Mrs H3 tends to get a bit claustrophobic (she wasn’t awfully happy at Camden Underworld and thinks Half Moon is a little on the small side) but even I was having trouble in Proud. First of all the internet says that the capacity is for between 500 and 800 people (depending which site you read) however, I think that’s wildly optimistic. From what we could see (and admittedly being quite short that wasn’t much) the room isn’t much bigger than Half Moon’s 200 capacity space. And that was the problem. So many people were packed into the small area that it was almost impossible to move.

I’ve been to a few of Peter’s concerts now and I know two things – you don’t want to be down at the front or you end up covered in drinks and god knows what else that his mad fans throw at the stage and you don’t want to get caught up in the mosh when that gets going. The first we fortunately had no chance of doing, as crowded as the room was – the second we had no choice, because even pressed against the wall of the bar at the back of the room we were still in the moshing area.

Being somewhat on the short side my view of the stage was pretty much non-existent for most of the set as the stage is pretty low and there were a lot of tall people in front of me. I found this very annoying as I do at least like to get the occasional glimpse of the performer when I go to a concert. Finally I’d managed to secure a place right at the back, squashed up against the bar which afforded me a very occasional glimpse of Peter and his ballerinas (although I never did get to see Graham) when incredibly tall men happened to sway in the right directions (i.e. apart) and leave a sliver of a view.

Of course my position wasn’t the best. I was in the way of anyone trying to buy a drink – and there were many – and Mrs H3’s position was no better than mine. Add to that the lack of air from all those people squashed into such a small place and the whole thing became rather miserable.

To be honest it didn’t take much convincing for us to decide not to bother staying until the end of Peter’s set and instead try to make it back to the Jubilee Line for our last tube as he didn’t do anything different to what we’d seen before. Happily this turned out be the correct choice as he was only on stage for another five songs (which didn’t include Fuck Forever – and disappointingly for us there was no sign of the Wolfman either), which would have seen us stuck on getting the night bus and incredibly pissed off for having missed the tube.

My personal view of Proud is that they shouldn’t allow more than 300 people into the music room and they should raise the stage by a few inches to give us shorties who are stuck at the back at least some possibility of a view ... or better still arrange viewing in height order (with a strict no throwing policy enforced obviously).

The few photos of the evening have been added to the end of the slideshow of Peter's concerts below. They begin with the marvellous carved horse statues that are part of the restoration project that is taking place at Stables Market.

Anyway, tomorrow is the long-anticipated Ultravox reunion at the Roundhouse which I am very much looking forward to, even though I’ve been struck down with some strange summer cold or something (and no it’s not swine flu – just a sore throat, headache and just general miserableness).

We didn’t make it to the Headphone Disco in the end. Mrs H3 was ill – struck down with the same bug that I’ve now got I think – and as it didn’t start until 10.30pm and finished at 3am it gave us a similar problem to the concert with regards to getting home (neither of us wanted to drive to Islington). Having looked at the Facebook photos of the evening it seems I would have been about twenty five years older than every other person there so perhaps it’s a good thing we didn’t go after all.

Cinema...

On Friday evening we’re heading to the cinema to watch X Men Origins: Wolverine, the first of several films that we’ll be going to see in the near future. We’ve already booked our tickets for the Imax showing of Star Trek on the 27th May and of course I’m still on countdown for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Grrr

I hate how my blog seems to have changed size without me doing anything to it. My banner is too big for the box, although its sized to fit and now the new Harry Potter trailer is hanging into the sidebar and obscuring everything.

How do I make the text area bigger? And how do I get my banner fitting properly again. Anyone with ideas please let me know.

Hurrah another post!

Okay so I’m trying to be good and blog a little more regularly. Obviously good for me as I don’t have to write ‘War and Peace’ whilst trying to kick start my somewhat bad memory into gear back over a month and good for you not to have such huge posts to plough through.

As usual most of the post will be about music, but first some Harry Potter news. Last week Warner Brothers announced the release date for the film had changed again ... although fortunately by only two days. Anyway, the film will now be released on Wednesday 15th July, which as the ticker shows is in 87 days and I am getting very excited about it. The main reason for this of course was the release of a new trailer last Thursday, which is below. Also you should check out the much better quality HD version here as it’s amazing.



Obviously for me the high point was Severus Snape and the whole “fight back you coward” bit (although I thought the Katy Bell section amongst others was also excellently done) and thanks to the Leaky Cauldron my desktop is now sporting the screen cap of Severus blasting Harry off his feet.

So back to the music. Mrs H3 and I went to the Half Moon in Putney for the latest Johnny Bramwell gig and it was an absolute cracker. Recently released from recording the new album, having announced that Pete and Andy had chucked him out of the recording studio, Johnny was more talkative than at some of the previous gigs we’ve seen, although he was a touch dark and brooding (not that that’s a bad thing in my book). He did an excellent live set including songs from the new album including a fabulous new track called The Moon is a Blind Eye although unfortunately had to stop singing on a few occasions due to interruptions from a rather loud crowd, including a very drunk girl and her friends, who instead of being responsible enough to remove her from the room instead spent the last half hour of the concert loudly shushing her – which was almost as annoying as the girl herself. I have to admit that several times I was debating whether I could give her a quick punch to the side of the head to knock her out without being ejected from the gig – but of course I and none of the others around her, who I am sure were thinking similar things did that.

As I’ve mentioned before talking during concerts is a pet peeve of mine. I can understand friend’s saying a few words to each other occasionally; obviously even Mrs H3 and I aren’t immune to that. But when your conversation is continuous and drowns out the music of the performer then it is most definitely NOT acceptable. What I don’t understand is why people pay to go and see an artist and then ignore the concert to have a chat. If you want to talk, piss off back to the bar and talk there. Don’t ruin my and everyone else who is seriously trying to listen to the artist’s set’s evening. If nothing else it’s incredibly rude!

Sorry rant over.

Anyway, there were two support acts and I have to admit that we missed the first completely. However, the second Jonny Taylor, I thought was rather entertaining (not quite so much to Mrs H3’s taste), although he did sound a touch too much like James Blunt (which is never a good thing). I particularly liked one called London Town which you can hear on the link at his Myspace page.

Before the concert we went to the Lebanese restaurant called Mezza which is across the road from the pub. The last time we were at the Half Moon they were serving food which they brought in from the restaurant and so we decided to cut the middle man and head straight there. The food was lovely. The starter was spiced meat or feta cheese wrapped in filo pastry which was followed by lamb and vegetable kebabs with rice. The service was friendly but not over-attentive and it seemed a popular place. Definitely one I’d recommend.



On Wednesday we’re off to see Peter Doherty (yep him again) at Proud in Camden and then, in a bit of a departure from the normal stuff for us, we’re going to Headphone Disco on Friday in Islington. I’d never heard of this concept of a silent disco until Mrs H3 introduced me to it. Basically you are given a pair of headphones upon entering and you wear them to listen to the music which is provided by two DJs. You can toggle between sounds as you wish and dance away to your heart’s content (yep you know that’s not going to happen!) or you can take off the headphones and watch everyone else dancing to the music that you can no longer hear. It should be interesting if nothing else and we’re on the guest list so it costs nothing except for travel and drinks.

Oh and I finally started uploading stuff to my YouTube channel which you can find here. So far I’ve only uploaded the three videos that I took at the Johnny Bramwell concert (alas not the new track, hopefully I’ll get that at Guildford in a few weeks time) but hopefully over the next few weeks I’ll find the time to upload our videos from the Peter Doherty and Elbow concerts, plus of course any new concerts we go to (and maybe some old ones too ... perhaps the time has come for the guess the song game!). There is also an old and very bad quality video from my old phone which was taken one night in the Sherwood Oak. Feel free to watch it if you wish.

The Birthday Stuff

So as I may have mentioned previously, last Friday was Mrs H3’s 30th birthday. The weekend got off to a good start for her on Thursday with a birthday party held by her work colleagues, which began at work and continued into the pub where I understand copious quantities of Sambuca cocktails were consumed. I would like to point out that I wasn’t at this celebration as it was expected to be just a few quick drinks after work. However, it went on ‘til well past midnight…dirty stop outs!

On the big day itself, Mrs H3 and I went to the O2 where we first visited the new British Music Exhibition at the Bubble. This is a fascinating journey through the history of British music from 1945 to the present day and includes music, videos, costumes (including Adam Ant’s King’s of the Wild Frontier suit and David Bowie’s Pierrot costume from the Ashes to Ashes video) and much more besides. Highlight of the trip for us had to be the dance room where we learnt to disco dance and (oh I really hate to admit this) do the dance for the birdy’s song which we could then watch back on video afterwards. Unfortunately we didn’t get to learn a musical instrument or record a song as the places were already taken and we didn’t want to hang around for too long waiting. The exhibition has an interactive ticket which you can use to log various points and then look up further details on a special account on the internet afterwards (and yes it does apparently put the dances and any other activities you’ve taken part in on there too) and also includes three free ITunes downloads. I thought this was an excellent exhibition and well worth a visit.

Lunch followed at Zizzi’s where the astute waitress spotted the flashing and giant 30 badges that Mrs H3 was sporting and deduced it was her birthday. Generously she gave us a free glass of Prosecco each to celebrate with our meal, which consisted of their scrummy cheese & balsamic onion garlic bread followed by pizza.

And so it was time to visit the other exhibition currently at the Bubble – Body Worlds & the Mirror of Time. Mrs H3 and I visited the original Body Worlds at Brick Lane back in 2003 and were interested to see the new exhibition. To be honest, although it was much better value than last year’s Tutankhamun, and a damn sight more interesting too, it was pretty similar to the previous show, and with less exhibits. I think we felt that once you’ve seen one plastinated body you’ve seen them all really, whatever strange positions they’ve been put into – although this exhibition does feature (and I really hope I’m not giving anything away here) a giraffe – and bloody huge it is too! As ever there was a section on conception, pregnancy and child birth which I had to skip as I’m far too squeamish about that sort of thing, but other than that we did spend time taking in the whole thing which took about an hour and a half to complete. If you didn’t get to the original Body Worlds exhibition I would definitely recommend it, although it doesn’t feature the plastinated body split into a series of lengthways slides which was for me at least, one of the highlights of the original.

And so we came to the evening when we joined Mrs H3’s parents, her brother and his girlfriend for an evening at an entertainment venue called Madisons in Biggin Hill. This is one of those places that features a set menu which is served whilst the bar staff entertain the customers with a few songs and dancing on the bar and serves cocktails, bottled beers and other expensive drinks. The meal was not overly ambitious, the starters were pate, prawn cocktail, bruschetta and parma ham and melon; the main course a choice of salmon, chicken or lamb shank all served with (lumpy) mashed potatoes and a dessert of either apple and rhubarb crumble and custard or vanilla ice cream. The entertainment was okay though with the undoubted highlight being at the end when they set fire to the bar and a fire eater performed. During the evening Mrs H3 was called to the stage, along with the other people celebrating their birthdays and was presented with a birthday cake that I had bought for her – a small sponge cake featuring a photo of the Hoff (who else). Home once more we finished the champagne that we’d opened earlier in the evening and chatted until the wee small hours before finally heading off for bed.

The following day saw me at work as usual, feeling somewhat tired from the previous late night and early morning (I have so much trouble sleeping in new places). This was followed by the less than inspiring England friendly match and then a meal at the pub followed by a few drinks. We had originally intended to dress up and go to Maidstone for the evening, but everyone who had told us they were going backed out at the last moment and after a few drinks we decided we couldn’t be bothered to go. Instead we stayed at the pub with Dan, Bobby and Martin and had a few more drinks before acquiring more champagne and heading home. Obviously old age (and the late night the day before) was catching up with us, along with the clocks going forward and by the time we’d watched Peter Doherty on Jonathan Ross it was gone 3am.

Sunday began with a visit to the local café for breakfast, and for me the chance to relax for a few hours as I didn’t have to work. Mrs H3 headed home for a birthday party with her family, which I attended later in the day before we headed out for the Peter Doherty concert at the Troxy. The evening was completed in style with a kebab at Lewisham’s finest kebab house. I arrived home just after 2am feeling completely knackered and very glad that I wasn’t working the following day.

The fun hadn’t finished for Mrs H3 though. Keen to continue the celebrations she and her work colleagues went to the theatre to see the musical Le Cage Aux Folles on Tuesday evening whilst I flew out to Spain to see my parents, with whom my sister and my nephew Freddie who is now 3 months old were staying for a much needed few days of R&R.

It's That Time Again ...

Good grief another month gone already! So once again you get the extremely late and horrendously long update.

Firstly a HUGE apology to Mrs H3 for not mentioning earlier that amongst all the things we were doing recently we were celebrating her 30th birthday on 27th March. Part of the reason for this is that for quite a long time she was panicking about reaching this milestone and I didn’t want to upset her any further with a reminder, but then obviously failure to blog regularly came into it as well and so instead of getting ready for the big event after a complaint that I hadn’t mentioned it on here, all I can do now is report on the weekend and say congratulations on getting through the celebrations and for realising 30 isn’t the end of your life!


The Music Bit…The Deal was for the Diamond and the Skulldozer!

So the last time I blogged we were on the verge of going to see Elbow at Wembley and what a fantastic evening it was too. Completely different from the Brighton gig in so many ways, not least the quantity of people in attendance (obviously, considering the size of the place compared to previous venues, although I have to admit I was surprised at how full the place was – I guess it really is finally their year). It was clear from the moment that Guy and the lads stepped onto the stage how chuffed they were to be there and the huge crowd added considerably to the anthem-like numbers such as One Day Like This, although as I said before I’m just happy to see them wherever they perform (however, not the show they’re doing supporting U2 – and not just ‘cos of the £150 price tag - and annoyingly, the concerts in Manchester with the Halle Orchestra sold out before I even had a chance to read their Myspace blog post about them!)

Unfortunately my snazzy new phone broke (the slider cable broke causing the screen to black out) and had to be sent back to Sony for repair however, once again Mrs H3 and I managed to take copious amounts of photos and video footage (pics below as ever … I really will get my Youtube channel up and running for the videos one day I promise).





So then began the Peter Doherty (yes Peter in the press now he’s turned thirty (just like Mrs H3!) and grown up, although actually he’s always called himself that) tour to promote his rather excellent new album Grace/Wastelands which began with two concerts in Brighton and Folkestone and ended on the Sunday after Lisa’s birthday at the Troxy in London. Disappointingly, for all those detractors who have done nothing but slag him off ever since I mentioned we were going to see him, he is now completely clean and turned up at every gig.

The first at Brighton Dome (where else) was an interesting affair to say the least. The first support band didn’t turn up so his drummer came out and did a few songs, followed by a friend of his who we’d seen at the Royal Albert Hall and hadn’t enjoyed, although he was better than the drummer. Finally came Dot Allison and her band, who weren’t my (or Mrs H3’s) cup of tea at all. Luckily, having parked ourselves in the front row of the stalls seats, we were having fun watching the other members of the audience which took our minds off the support. When Peter eventually made it onto the stage, dressed casually in jeans and jumper, he did so with his full band along with a three piece string orchestra and at one point a double bass player and Dot again (as she collaborated on some of the songs), as well as Wolfman who strangely didn’t sing along to For Lovers as I would have expected. The music ranged from his solo acoustic stuff to full on rock and roll chic with a lot of free-form jazz type stuff in between. At one point there were so many people on stage I thought it was turning into a Sigur Ros concert. However, throughout he was excellent, even if the pseudo free-form jazz stuff didn’t particularly float my boat and with a crowd that was very clearly upper middle class and awfully polite it was funny to see the excitement that songs like Fuck Forever and Can’t Stand Me Now produced. It was a really good, if somewhat different evening to the one I had been expecting. He finished without an encore, which came as a surprise to most of us, but as he’d been hit by a drink thrown by someone in the audience and then almost by a lit cigarette, perhaps not completely so.

The following night at the Leas Cliff Hall in Folkestone was completely different. Firstly, we totally missed the support acts and then chose to go and sit on the balcony to watch the show rather than join the moshers. This was an excellent choice as it turned out as the crowd were very different in culture to the previous night. So was the show. Peter, who was once again sporting the casual jeans and t shirt look performed solo for the most part, with only occasional guest appearances by fellow Babyshambles cohort Mick Whitnall and the always value for money Wolfman (still dressed in the same clothes), to break things up (and no, he still didn’t sing on For Lovers). Peter spent a considerable amount of the concert proving his guitar skills with some lengthy riffs and even more time dodging the considerable amount of drinks that the very rowdy audience threw his way. After promising to finish with Albion, he did actually close with Can’t Stand Me Now. As is our wont Mrs H3 and I didn’t move when the lights went up, waiting for the venue to clear somewhat before heading home and it was lucky we didn’t for about seven minutes later Peter reappeared to do a blinding version of Albion to a by then largely empty room. As ever both evenings were caught in pictures and video.

And so to the Troxy - a beautiful art deco venue in Limehouse, London. This was the last night of the tour, and the last night of a very long weekend of celebrating for Mrs H3 and I. The audience was made up of a selection of the types of people that had been at the others - both the stylish and fashionable and the die hard beer throwing fans and the show was sold out. Once again we opted to miss the support acts, although we weren’t successful in the case of Dot Allison, who hadn’t grown on us at all. The gig too was a hybrid of the previous ones we’d seen – the band and the string section was in attendance as were special guests Graham Coxon, Wolfman (and yes this time he did sing on For Lovers and he was bloody awful – although he was wearing different clothes at last!) and Lee Mavers (the lead singer of 90’s band The La’s), which meant of course that the free-form jazz was back, but also there was the acoustic numbers (which I think on balance I generally prefer) too. Peter had chosen to be more formal for this last evening, dressing in a suit and hat, very dashing and very much in step with the venue. Unfortunately, the late arrival meant that we were quite far back and so my view of Peter wasn’t good enough to take any photos or video, although Mrs H3 did manage to. All in all I felt this was the most interesting of the three shows because of the mixture of styles, although I have equally enjoyed all of the shows just for the opportunity to spend a great deal of time gazing at Peter Doherty who, when clean, is a truly beautiful looking man.




So the next concert on the agenda is John Bramwell at the Half Moon in Putney on Thursday, the first time I’ve seen anything I Am Kloot-related for almost a year. Needless to say I am very excited at the prospect of seeing him (and hopefully Pete) again. I’m really hoping that he might be doing some of the tracks from the new Kloot album that he and the band performed in gigs earlier this year. This is followed on 22nd April by another evening with Peter Doherty in Camden and then the eagerly awaited (by me at least) Ultravox concert at the Roundhouse. Early May brings a visit to see the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain at the Cadogan Hall in London as I have become interested in learning to play the ukulele (if anyone wants to teach me please feel free to shout).

Lastly, I just wanted to mention that the new album Hocus Opus One by one of my favourite Wizard Rock bands Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office has finally been released. This long anticipated album is a heavy duty slice of electro-dance pop and is definitely worth a listen so check them out at their Myspace page by clicking on the link. Hmmm, actually while I’m about it I’d also like to mention another excellent new release. Zoë from Split Seven Ways and Malfoy Manor is giving away free (as she often does – check out her Myspace pages) The Broken Bird e.p. under the name Zoë’s Adventures Underground. This is a beautiful piece of work and non-Wrock, for those of you still a little nervous about the whole Wizard Rock thing.