A darkness brighter than a thousand suns

I am always determined to keep my musical tastes catholic. This extends to occasional revisits to genres which have long been categorized in the Birks musical database as "pure shite". 

Since I was 13 years old and a friend at school encouraged me to dump that Moody Blues stuff and listen to "rock" (in this case, the first Led Zeppelin album, which had just been released), anything even approximating to heavy metal has never darkened the Birks door.

So it was with some trepidation that I saw that Iron Maiden were on Abbey Road a couple of weeks ago. Having suffered the irredeemably thin body and talent of Norah Jones, followed by the vapicity of Natasha Bedingfield (Like, I think spirituality is an important part of all of us), I almost approached the idea of listening to some Iron Maiden with enthusiasm.

It's a bit difficult to take a band seriously when the first thing you think of when they appear on screen is "This Is Spinal Tap". I mean, they are all over 50 and some of them are probably approaching 60, but they maintain the heavy metal gear of the 1970s.  Nothing wrong with that, of course. Stay true. But I just kept wanting to laugh.

However, I couldn't help but note that they seemed to create little more guitar sound with four guitarists than Muse seems to manage with one and a half. Also, four guitarists does seem a surfeit, especially when Keane has no guitarists at all. 

So I propose that Iron Maiden transfer one of their guitarists to Keane. That should liven things up a bit on the Irish front.


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I wouldn't have thought it possible for anyone to ruin Tom Waits' music utterly, but an album from the Hell's Music Choir managed just that. 

When I was a child there used to be a radio programme on Sunday night on the Light Programme (back when "wireless" was a fashionable word the first time round) called "Sing Something Simple". This consisted of the anodyzation of modern songs (Lennon McCartney stuff was popular) into standard 4/4 time and, preferably, into the key of C. They were then sung by three or four singers and backed by session musicians who would clearly rather have beeen in the pub.

Well, that is what I was reminded of when I heard the Hell's Music Choir utterly destroy "Martha" and "Downtown Train".

And, speaking of Mr Waits, I've now realized why his music is so popular with other musicians. I've been struggling (I mean, really struggling) with the piano part for "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis", and the chords are just fucking brilliant. Impossible for an amateur like me to play, but even I can see how clever his stuff is. (Oh, and I looked at "I Wish I Was In New Orleans"' piano part, and just gave up in disbelief. One bit had four keys played with the right hand over an octave plus two. Well, my fingers just ain't that big.)

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They seem to have upgraded the posting system at Live Journal, with a rich-text option. Damn, will my hard learned HTML coding skills never be used again? I mean, how many people these days created their first web site using Notepad?


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Good news from trip back. Lost weight.  Bad news, it will all go back on as soon as I start training again.

Virgin utterly ballsed up the movies on the way back, meaning that I failed to catch "Bobby".  Only four of the channels were working (which they declined to announce) and the movies shown were not on the channels advertised. Then, on the second cycle, they showed the movies that they had shown on the flight out (which did not include "Bobby"). No apology for that, either.

I think Virgin are short on spare planes, and are running those they have to near-100% capacity. This means that they can't take a plane out of service when "minor" things happen such as the video system going kaput, or seats breaking. It's a pity, because the staff at Virgin are nice and (usually) competent. Unlike British Airways. But Branson appears to be running it all rather tightly, making the boarding process a bit chaotic these days, and the service on board less than 100%.

Ah well, Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks, so that will be a new experience. Still pondering whether to bash out my own dosh on an upgrade.