On Wednesday V and I went to see The Feeling at Shepherds Bush Empire - one of my favourite venues in London.  Let's be honest: given my music preferences (Neil, Tom, and so on), this was more for V than for me (q.v. Bon Jovi @ Twickenham later this year!).  However, I must admit to a guilty-pleasure-like enjoyment of the band.  Sod it, it's not a guilty pleasure, they play unashamedly derivative pop, and why the hell not?  Ok, they always make me think of 70s west coast rock, Queen, early 80s rock, and so on, but then Oasis did the same thing with the 60s (and especially the Beatles, of course) and for some reason they were more acceptable to like.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

The support was a band called Palladium.  They were ok - I'll probably have a listen when they get their album out (May, they said) - and were frighteningly young and skinny, but that's probably just my age and weight being envious...  The keyboard player suffered the age-old curse of keyboard players, of how do you play a static instrument and still jump around in a cool manner?  (The answer being that you don't, of course).  Their set had the same sort of influences as The Feeling - Huey Lewis came to mind a couple of times - and played perfectly adequate pop...  They were also very keen on getting us to sign up for their mailing list when we were leaving.  I get quite enough spam already, thanks!

The Feeling played pretty much all of the tracks from both albums, and threw in a cover of Electric Dreams during the main set (we left before the encore to beat the crowd).  To be honest, they were better than I expected them to be - the band are very tight, I like their songs, basically it was just a thoroughly enjoyable set.  In many ways they're a band who are far easier to like than to admire, which makes for easier listening than a lot of the other bands I like!

It's a real pity I let my login for Dime lapse, as there are a bunch of boots of Neil's shows available at the moment.  There's a list at Rust Radio.  I've found a download link for the 2008-03-05 show in MegaUpload here, but I really want to get the show I was at!  If anyone knows of a download link for the 2008-03-06 show, I'd be grateful..!

Well, that was good.  Interesting set - shame he didn't play Cinnamon Girl, Cortez, or Rocking In The Free World - but wow, what a show.  I'd like to give a good kicking to whoever it was thought that clapping along (out of time) to Old King was a good idea..!

It felt like 2 gigs - 1 hour of acoustic material, then 1:20 of electric.  Bargain!

I've seen his extended guitar work-outs described as being thought of as transcendental by some and interminable by others - count me in the former category. No Hidden Path isn't my favourite of these, but there's something mesmerising and elemental in his playing that keeps me from ever getting bored, even if I find myself drifting a bit - and wondering if the big yellow light on the right of the stage was meant to symbolise the sun?

Set list from Sugar Mountain:

1. From Hank To Hendrix
2. Ambulance Blues
3. Kansas
4. A Man Needs A Maid
5. Try
6. Harvest
7. After The Gold Rush
8. Old King
9. Love Art Blues
10. Heart Of Gold
11. Out On The Weekend
12. Old Man
    ---
13. The Loner
14. Dirty Old Man
15. Spirit Road
16. Down By The River
17. Hey Hey, My My
18. Roll Another Number
19. Oh, Lonesome Me
20. The Believer
21. Powderfinger
22. No Hidden Path
    ---
23. Fuckin' Up

Wise words indeed.

Neil Young, tonight, at the Hammersmith Apollo.

I can't wait.

Since I now have a shiny new iPod Classic 160GB*, and since iTunes is now offering DRM-free music at decent bit-rates, and since I didn't want to wait for delivery from the OW OM Store in the US, I've just purchased Rainer's Westwood Sessions Volume I.

I've got everything else of Rainer's that I can find (all his CDs, mainly bought from Glitterhouse), and the two live recordings at Archive.org, so it's no real suprise that I think it's great! 

Rainer was a Tucson-based guitarist, master of dobro and slide guitar, who played with among others Giant Sand, Robert Plant, Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top - see Rainer's The Texas Tapes), and released a handful of recordings before his tragic death in 1997.  The website at www.raineroftucson.com seems to have gone, but a biog can be found at Wikipedia.

The Westwood Sessions were recently found and dusted off by Jim Blackwood, and release on Howe Gelb's OW OM label.  They're unreleased tapes from sessions Rainer did between Barefoot Rock and Worried Spirits, and contain some real gems.  It's a very bluesy record, including songs such as J B Lenoir's Voodoo Music, but for me the highlights are Rainer's own songs, especially Zealots Serve Dogmas and I Am A Sinner.

The last word goes to Howe:

* I've been waiting for an MP3 player that has sufficient capacity for ages... I used to have an Empeg Car with 70GB of discs in it, and had filled that by the time I changed my car 2 years ago (though I never got around to putting it in this car), so I've been wanting something big enough to take everything I've got...  Now, as a car player the iPod is just rubbish compared to the Empeg.  I'm using it with a tape adapter so the sound is... well, ok at best, and I really do miss the flexible playlist structure of the Empeg.  And the ease of use in the car.  And the extra features like filters.  And being able to see what's playing all the time.  The radio never worked properly, mind you!  But, overall, I'm very happy with the iPod.

Here's a quick techy post to start the New Year...

In SQL Management Studio you can save your results pane as a CSV file. All you need to do is select the grid, right-click, and select "Save Results as...". Nice and simple (and a quick way of getting your data out of the DB).

However (and there just had to be a "however", didn't there?), the CSV file that's saved can't be read by the .Net StreamReader object, as the Encoding can't be detected (it's Encoding.Unicode) automatically. Initially, I did try to detect it using the BOM (Byte Order Mark) of the file, but there isn't one. In the end, I checked that the 1st and 3rd characters were value zero, which for the files I'm interested in is perfectly valid, and if so explicitly set the Encoding to Unicode. If you do this, make sure you set detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks to False.

Updated 2008-01-18: And now, just to annoy me (it's a conspiracy, I tell you!), the file has miraculously acquired a BOM: FF FE, which according to Wikipedia means it's UTF-16 little-endian. Not sure if the endian-ness (or whatever the term is) makes a difference, as Encoding.Unicode still works.

I've no idea where this BOM has come from - does anyone know if SQL Management Studio was updated through Windows Update recently?

Somehow I had managed to let my hosting account expire.  However, after paying the invoice and asking nicely, those kind people at WebHost4Life restored everything...

Well, what's new?

I've got tickets for the following gigs:

2008-03-06 - Neil Young (Hammersmith Apollo)
2008-03-19 - The Feeling (Shepherds Bush Empire)
2008-05-30 - Bruce Springsteen (Emirates Stadium)
2008-06-27 - Bon Jovi (Twickenham)

...which should all be fun!  I may have a spare ticket for Neil Young - depending if PH still wants it.

I was given The Traveling Wilburys Collection for xmas - great couple of albums, especially Volume One.

V and I are off up to the parent's place this weekend - it's my Dad's birthday the week after, so we're going out for dinner.  Just for a change we're taking V's car rather than mine - it will be the longest journey the car has ever made, so should blow away a few cobwebs.

Right, that's it.  Update done.  Back to work...

A couple of weeks ago I had the honour and great pleasure of playing one of the finest golf courses in the world: Royal Troon. We've been talking about it for years, as Alan's father, Jim, is a member there, so we were able to get signed in by a member (which makes life a *lot* cheaper and easier!).

We played the Old Course on the Sunday, and the Portland Course on the Monday. Fortunately the rain held off when we played the Old Course, and while I had a terrible round (I don't even want to think about my score!), it was glorious. The Monday was a different story - horizontal rain! Still enjoyable, in its way, but if I'd been anywhere else I'd have called it a day at the turn.

We stayed at the Piersland Hotel, which I can thoroughly recommend, even if they didn't let us have the sound up on the telly for the England-France rugby match...

More photos are available on my Flickr photostream.

Last night I paid my first visit to The Luminaire, "London's most agreeable live music venue", which isn't too far from the truth, and saw what his support acts were referring to as Howeapalooza (well, we had Howe-fest, so why not?), the final stop on Howe Gelb's latest tour.

The Luminaire is on Kilburn High Road, and seems to be easy enough to get to by tube, though last night I drove.  Parking was simple enough - I found somewhere round the corner which was unrestricted after 6:30pm.  I do prefer to drive to gigs in London if I can - the inability to drink is more than outweighed by normally getting home a lot quicker and with a seat all the way..!

 

There were two opening acts, the first being Kate Maki, who played a great little set, accompanied at various times by Lonna Kelley (the second support act), and Thøger Lund from Howe's band.  I really enjoyed her set - enough so that I've just bought FLAC downloads of her first two albums from the Zunior website (only around a tenner for both, which is a hell of a lot better than iTunes manage!).  I've only heard the most recent so far, The Sun Will Find Us, which is an interesting listen.  At heart it's a folk album, I'd say, but with splashes of horns to add colour.  She's certainly someone to keep an eye on, and I'll definitely seek her out when she tours again over here.

I first saw Lonna Kelley when she played with Howe at the Barbican earlier this year, where V and I thought she was doing a startled-deer-in-the-headlights thing in front of a crowd that size.  After seeing her in the tiny Luminaire, I'm no longer so sure.  She seems to be quite diffident, or maybe shy, in front of the audience.  Anyway, she and her band played for the better part of an hour, joined for the last number by Howe, Thøger and Kate.  To be honest, I'm not really a fan.  I thought the set was just a bit... dull, really.  I'm not sure what it is that puts me off.  Her band were great, especially the guitarist, but it just never took off.  I don't think there's enough variation for me to keep interested, and her voice, good as it is, begins to wear me out after a while.  It's a quiet, breathy, thing that leave me wishing she'd just throw her head back and put some force into it all...

Then we had Howe.  Ramblin' Howe Gelb, as Kate called him.  I think we probably had about 25% anecdote to 75% music (surely Howe hasn't reached his anecdotage just yet?)  Anyway, the intimate set was heavy with material from his latest release, Upside Down Home 2007.  Thøger Lund provided the only accompaniment, on upright bass, until the very end of the set, when they were joined by the Kate and Lonna. 

Howe claims to not have enough time to write any songs any more, not that he seems to be slowing down his rate of record release, but instead draws on his bank of songs (which he described as a bank that has only one customer, so won't be running out any time soon)

I can't remember much of the setlist, but we certainly had The Hangin' Judge, Down On Town (originally from Valley of Rain, the first Giant Sand album, which Howe said they were remastering for a 25th anniversary reissue.  Well, he said they were removing some of the 80's production, anyway...), Seldom Matters, and Shiver ("our Coke commercial").  For the encore (not that he left the stage), we had Paradise Hereabouts and Get To Leave from the Sno Angel album, with backing vocals provided by Kate and Lonna (and, half-heartedly, from the audience).  While playing Get To Leave it seemed like Howe didn't want to do so, segueing into Ring of Fire, something else (the name of which escapes me, and which I can't believe I've forgotten), and ending up with a few choruses of Hey Jude.

Then the set was over, and I left for the drive back to Reading (which was fast enough to make up for the drive along the M40 getting there!)

I'm not doing much better at the whole posting regularly thing, am I?

Anyway, I thought I'd mention a couple of albums I'm listening to quite a lot at the moment, Justin Nozuka's Holly and Emilana Torrini's The Fisherman's Woman. They're both people I've seen as support acts (and don't we all just love discovering new music that way??): Justin Nozuka supporting John Cale when I saw him in the Fez Club in Reading, and Emiliana Torrini was one of the acts at this year's Howe Gelb & Friends event at the Barbican. 

Nozuka's album is a great singer-songwriter type of thing, though he's a lot more interesting than most I've heard lately (not thinking of Blunt in particular, of course!).

Emiliana Torrini has (as far as I can tell) two albums out.  The first, Love in the Time of Science is a more electronic album, where Fisherman's Woman is a largely acoustic affair.  You may have already heard one of her tracks at the end of the second Lord of the Rings film - she's the vaguely Bjork-y sounding one who did Gollum's Song.  Fisherman's Woman isn't very Bjork-like, but there are similarities in their voices, something about the slightly breathy sound and the phrasing.

I'm looking forward to next week: Howe Gelb (supported by Lonna Kelly, who was also at the Barbican gig) at The Luminaire in Kilburn.  Should be a great evening.  Can't decide whether to drive or take the train, though...