It's been a while since I wrote anything here. But then it's been a while since I had anything to write about here.

Last Friday (January 26th) was the first in what may hopefully be a regular monthly night at The Peel in Kingston - House of Progression. Featuring on the bill were (supposedly) the John Young Band and Landmarq.

As it happened, I was too late to catch John Young (who made a solo appearance), hearing just a handful of chords before he said farewell and left the stage, whilst apologising for the absence of the remainder of the band.

Landmarq were interesting, and passably good save for one major problem - no originality. Bands and artistes have in the past been described - sometimes by themselves - as magpies, but it's a cliche that is particularly apt when describing Landmarq. Think every major prog band you've ever heard up until the 90s, think of all their key phrases and characteristics. Think of a band which manages to aggregate all those different fragments together into whole pieces, then front it with a female singer who sounds just like Toyah Willcox (circa "Mystery") minus the lisp, with a soupcon of Kate Bush, and you have Landmarq. As musicians they are competent enough, and the performances solid, but unfortunately even though you haven't, you can't help wondering of you haven't heard it all before, and this is unfortunate because the nett result is an overwhelming feeling that each of the songs (or instrumentals) go on just a little bit too long, and eminently forgettable.

Tagged: House of Progression, Landmarq, gig review

Since I tend not to post bulletins with these things - except in cases of occasional mental aberration - I'm posting this here. Besides, here it's a matter of record and doesn't disappear after a few days.

[ NOW ]
Current mood:
Bored; weary; depressed.

Current music:
Silence

Current taste:
Uh?

Current hair:
Long. Unbearably wavy.

Current clothes:
Jeans; t-shirt; quilted shirt; Cat boots.

Current annoyance:
Lack of a job; lack of money.

Current smell:
?

Current thing I should be doing:
Working. If only I had a job.

Current windows open:
kmail; firefox (x2); konqueror; konsole (x2, with 8 tabs in total); kwrite (to write this). Not one piece of Microsoft junk in evidence.

Current desktop picture:
The Pit - Valentine 2007 flyer.

Current favorite band:
Floyd; Frost; Kino; Pallas; Korn; Linkin Park (yes, honestly); Rammstein.

Current book:
Quiller's Run, Adam Hall; The Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan; The Neutronium Alechemist, Peter Hamilton.

Current cd in stereo:
None.

Current crush:
...

Current favorite celeb:
Celebs are wholly over-rated.

[ DO YOU.. ]

Smoke?:
Not for a very long time.

Do drugs?:
Not significantly.

Have a dream that keeps coming back?:
Not for a very long time.

Remember your first love?:
No, sadly.

Still love him/her?:
Since I don't remember it, how can I?

Read the newspaper?:
When I have time and can get hold of a publication worthy of the name.

Have any gay or lesbian friends?:
Yes, I think it's fair to say I probably do.

Believe in miracles?:
Every miracle has been worked for very hard by someone.

Believe it's possible to remain faithful forever?:
On the fence.

Consider yourself tolerant of others?:
Most of the time.

Consider love a mistake?:
Occasionally. Loving, or being loved by, the wrong person can be very dangerous to one's well-being.

Like the taste of alcohol?:
Hell, yes.

Have a favorite candy?:
No.

Believe in astrology?:
Hell, no.

Believe in magic?:
Hell, no.

Believe in god?:
Hell, no.

Have any pets:
No.

Go to or plan to go to college:
Been there, done that.

Have any piercings?:
No.

Have any tattoos?:
No.

Hate yourself:
Where's the mileage in that?

Have an obsession?:
Other than computers and geekery? No.

Have a secret crush?:
If I did, and said so, it wouldn't be secret would it?

Have a best friend?:
I value all my true friends - new and old - highly. It wouldn't serve to start rating them against each other.

Wish on stars?:
Duh, no.

[ LOVE LIFE ]

Ever been in love?:
The jury's out.

Do you believe in love at first sight?:
Open verdict.

Do you believe in "the one?":
Absolutely not. In 6 billion people on the planet there are bound to be huge numbers of people with the right qualities. It's just a matter of random circumstance which of them - if any - you happen to meet and bond with.

Describe your ideal significant other:
Don't believe in ideals in practice. This is an imperfect world.

[ETC]

Have you ever played a game that required removal of clothing?:
Sadly, not that I ever recall.

Have you ever been intoxicated?:
Many a time.

Have you ever been caught "doing something?":
No.

Are you a tease?:
Am I? Hardly for me to say.

Shy to make the first move?:
I have been in the past. That seems to have started changing at last.

[ APPEARANCE ]

Hair:
Long; dark; intolerably wavy. (Why couldn't I have been blessed with basically straight hair?)

Eyes:
Brown.

Height:
5' 10"

[ LAST THING.. ]

Bought:
Shopping.

Ate & Drank:
Salami roll.

Read:
Other than this survey? Some product blurb or other.

Watched on TV:
Magnum Force.

[ EITHER OR.. ]

beer or cider:
Yes

drinks or shots:
Drinks

cats or dogs:
Both, but primarily cats

single or taken:
Yes

pen or pencil:
Yes

gloves or mittens:
Gloves

food or candy:
Food

cassette or cd:
Yes

coke or pepsi:
Sorry? What is this "Pepsi" of which you speak?

[ WHO DO YOU WANT TO.. ]

kill:
No-one. I'd only consider it in defence, in which case I probably could as a last resort.

get really wasted with:
Dunno.

look like:
I'm fine thanks. Why would I want to be someone else?

avoid:
Anyone who represents trouble.

[ LAST PERSON YOU.. ]

saw:
The person it should have been.

talked to on the phone:
The person it should have been.

hugged:
The person it should have been.

instant messaged:
Not working right now.

kissed:
The person it should have been.

[ HAVE YOU EVER.. ]

Drank alcohol?:
Ba-duh...

Done drugs?:
Inhalers; alcohol.

Broken the law?:
In more ways than I can count.

Run away from home?:
No.

Broken a bone?:
Cracked a few. Never had a cast.

Played Truth Or Dare?:
Boring. No.

Kissed someone you didn't know?:
Yes.

Been in a fight?:
Yes.

Come close to dying?:
Yes.

[ WHAT IS.. ]

Your bedroom like?:
A room with my bed, clothes and other stuff in.

Your favorite thing for breakfast?:
Food.

Your favorite restaurant?:
Apparently it's not a restaurant any more. The Buena Mesa in Fuengirola.

What's on your bedside table?:
Clutter; lots of books; clutter; money; clutter; candle glass; clutter; and alarm clock. Oh, and clutter.

What do you eat when you raid the fridge late at night?:
Good question. Damned if I can remember.

What is your biggest fear?:
Not living up to my own standards.

Spontaneous or plain?:
Odd. That's not a diametric opposition. I'd have to go with spontaneity, though.

Do you know how to play poker?:
Yes.

What do you carry with you at all times?:
Wallet; money; inhalers; mobile 'phone; glasses; pen; keys.

How do you drive?:
Feet on the pedals; hands on the wheel? How do you expect me to drive?

What do you miss most about being little?:
Having no cares except wanting to stay up to watch TV.

Are you happy with your given name?:
Indeed.

What color is your bedroom?:
Whatever colour it was when I moved into the house in the 90s. Who gives a flying milk cart about colour?

Have you ever been in a play?:
As a kid. Hasn't everyone?

Do poor, homeless, or starving people sometimes annoy you?:
In themselves? No. When they get ceaselessly shoved down your throat as the vehicle for someone else's agenda? Yes.

Do you consider yourself to be a nice person?:
Most of the time. I have a bark. And sometimes I have a bite, but it's usually deserved.

Would you repost this survey?
If I didn't know better, I'd say that's what I was doing...

Tagged: surveys, who am I

At this time of year it is normal to expect frost to be forming. Unfortunately it would seem that the uncharacteristic weather conditions have even reached the music world: Frost has thawed.

Jem Godfrey announced, in a blog on Sunday, that due to increasing pressures on his time - both professionally and domestically - that Frost was going the way of every ice sculpture. This is, to me, a source of great disappointment. There is no doubt that prog is undergoing something of a renaissance (quietly and as yet largely unnoticed by the mainstream), but usually in the guise of the old guard getting off their sofas and churning out new, but recognisably similar stuff. Frost was a truly progressive breath of fresh air. (Ok, so I've bought into Jem's propoganda a little, but I do actually think that he was right. Prog had stagnated for 20 years - with very odd exceptions - and still was.)

I'm off to Rotherham to see the band perform approximately three quarters of Milliontown live on November eleventh, but already with a paradoxical sense of excitement and anticlimax. I was lucky enough to meet and participate in an interview with Jem (which turned into a 3-hour madhouse on air and proved that not all professional popsters are vaccuous prima donnas) when the album release was just on the horizon and he was fired up with almost childlike enhusiasm. I had subsequently been eagerly anticipating the emergence of album number 2 next year, but now it's not going to happen, and I am truly disappointed.

Hopefully this is just a long hiatus, and not a permanent departure. Our loss is the pop world's continued gain (bastards).

Tagged: music, prog rock, Frost*, Milliontown

Yet again, someone has chosen to break what didn't need fixong before. Alright so it's not the end of the world, and the site is still half-way usable, but some halfwit has decided that fixed size pages are the new goal in the message reading section, meaning that message text now strays over margins (particularly if there's embedded HTML), and no matter how big or small you have your browser window, the template displays how they see fit, not the reader. Oh, and the other upshot is that the boilerplate page footer now appears over the top of the last message in the index, or that one has to scroll down through empty space should one wish to find it when reading a message.

How is it, that a company worth $580M to Rupert Murdoch can't find a single competent page designer that understands that web pages are dynamic and can be re-sized by the viewer, or at least knows about basic standards and flexibility?! At least if they are going to insist on fixed formatting, they should test the damned things.

And I know I keep asking this, but why, oh why, oh WHY are they developing on and constantly breaking a live system? FFS guys - use some of your cash to buy decent staff, and fire the damned chimps.

Technorati tags: MySpace incompetence

Jon Oliva was over here on Thursday, doing the publicity thing for the new Jon Oliva's Pain album "Maniacal Renderings" (due out September 1st, and bloody marvellous). He interviewed, along with drummer Chris Kinder who helped guide the album production, with Twang at Totalrock (which is where I caught up with the aforementioned Messers Twang, Oliva and Kinder).

We ambled down to the Crobar on Manette street shortly before 7pm, and set to on the beer and shots (as one does). Round about 7:30 the new album - Chris' own CD-R copy of the master, no less - went into the player for its very first full public airing, and I was hooked immediately, even in the noisy environment of the bar. Having had an opportunity to hear Twang's press copy in a quiet space, I'm even more taken with it. Listening I was instantly aware of numerous influences and choices that had been made in the production. Alice Cooper, The Who and countless others have left their stamp on Oliva's psyche, and it shows. Musically there's no one set standard across the album, which wanders through heavy and progressive metal, and even strays close to ballad territory, all very successfully.

All this time, with Chris and Jon propping up the bar, and posters up announcing the meet-and-greet aspect of the evening, not one person had the presence to actually come talk to them of their own accord, in spite of the fact that there were a number there clearly with that very purpose in mind. Ah - the timid, and unintrusive British. I'm not complaining. I got to engage in some very interesting and wide-ranging conversation with Chris - on topics as wide-ranging as the economics of the Euro, barman's tricks for dispensing with nuisance customers at the end of the night, fine British beer, and underlying it all was much fun it is to be able to hit things for a living. He's not the stereotype of a drummer, though, enthusiastically making point that it's not always about knowing when to hit something, but which something to hit, and even - on occasion - when not to hit anything at all.

When the CD finished, and having finally gathered a small group of interested people, there was an impromptu visit, via St. Anne's Court and a brief stop at the door of Trident Studios, to the Intrepid Fox (where a certain Mr T gently persuaded the DJ to play a track from the Maniacal Renderings promo, to a very good reception). After a fairly swift drink, and a few fan photos with Jon, we returned to the Crobar for the final round-up, before Jon and Chris were escorted back to their hotel ready for their return flights to the continent the following morning.

All in all, I had a great time, was introduced to a great new album and a couple more very personable musicians. Unfortunately I was also re-acquainted with the disappointing timidity and general apathy of contemporary British rock audience. A wasted opportunity for many to meet a standing legend who still remains very human, unlike some nameless egotistical fools who have swallowed their own press. (You might consider that a passing reference to Dave "I *am* Megadeth, and I made Metallica" Mustaine, but I couldn't possibly comment.)

Technorati tags: Maniacal Renderings / Jon Oliva

RSSLinkBlah, blah, blah...

Anyone else experiencing this?

My friends count has gone up by 1 twice at times when I'm pretty sure I've not made or accepted any new friend requests. I'm also fairly sure it's happened before, too. Is anyone else getting this?

Trouble is I can't remember from one day to the next who's on my list (memory's going - I'm getting senile already) so it's difficult for me to figure out who's new to the list (if anyone).

Could just be yet another MySpace bug, of course. (Oooh - wouldn't that be a surprise?)

Blimey!  It worked.  I thought for a moment that it hadn't - which would have been no worse than my expectations.  But no, posting a blog recovers your profile contents (after a few minutes' delay).

I guess all this pratting around is what you get for hosting a data centre server farm serving 90-odd million accounts on a toy operating system (Windows, in case you didn't know).

A bit quirky, but there you are at least it retrieved the situation in the end.

Technorati tags: MySpace MySpace+down Windows incompetence

The proof just keeps rolling in.  MySpace is run by a bunch of people who once had a good idea, but are otherwise clueless when it comes to proper technology implementation and management.  Ho hum.

I understand that by posting a blog it will undo the worst of the after effects of the power outage at the data centre.  (The fact that any properly managed data centre would have backups and a recovery procedure that would mean only the very tiniest things would have been lost is just one more pebble in the stonepile of evidence of their incompetence.)

Ho hum.  Again.

Let's see if this actually works...  Not that it matters overly much to me.  I keep my own backups.