iceLife The half heard mutterings of a Kiwi a long, long way from home.

This night it was another in the continuing series of Eighties heavy metal acts you think you remember. Tonight - the Scorpions.

For me, Scorpions are fairly summed up by the tune "Rock You Like A Hurricane". This is an absolute head banging tennis racket smashing testosterone festival of a tune, and when I was more acne than human many years ago I simply adored it. And to be fair, I still do.

Scorpions are Germany's most famous rock act, featuring not one but two legendary guitarists (Uli Roth and Rudi Schenker, and the other, Matthias Jabs, ain't bad neither) not to mention the career spanning three, no, four decades.
At this gig they ably demonstrated why they still deserve your most serious respect.


They did a long professional set with a big encore and played all my favourite tracks. Big City Nights, Still Loving You, and the big one "Rock You Like A Hurricane" saved up for last. Use the following link to see all 7 photos from this show.

It was one of those gigs where you get back on the bus still air guitaring and singing along with the tracks. J loved it, and she'd never even heard of them.

Here is a review of this gig. It gets a solid 4 out of 5, noone left disappointed, a master class in how to thrill a loyal crowd 30 years on.

Setlist, well pretty much like this:

1 - Hour1
2 - Coming Home
3 - Bad Boys Running Wild
4 - The Zoo
5 - No Pain No Gain
6 - Coast to Coast
7 - Send me an Angel
8 - Holiday (full version)
9 - Hey you
10- In Trance
11- Im leaving you
12 - Alien Nation
13- 321
14- Blackout
15- Dynamite
16- Big City Nights

*** Encore ***
17- Still loving you
18- Wind of Change
19- Humanity
20- No one like you
21- Rock you like a Hurricane

This Saturday I went to my employers premises to baby sit an update of the software system I work on. Things went reasonably smoothly which is always good.

I work in Canary Wharf at the global headquarters of a bank. I still find it an impressive building. I work on the 36th floor.

This is how my building looks from the front.

And then that Saturday afternoon and then again on Sunday afternoon, J and I watched Arsenal, Inter Milan, Valencia and Paris St Germain compete against each other in the Emirates Cup competition.

The Emirates Cup is a friendly tournament between 4 major league European teams where each team plays two games, one a day. So we got to see 4 matches between these top quality sides which was very entertaining. It's held at Arsenal's home ground the Emirates Stadium, which is very new as stadium go and quite whizzily put together. Arsenal won the Cup this year but not by a whole lot.

You get to see a few great football shirt adaptations when you go to live matches here, and these two definitely got my "shirt of the day" award! Classy effort. Think of the persuasion that went into this! I got this photo in the tube tunnel that leads up towards the ground.

Luckily for me they stood the right way for the photo. :-)

This weekend Jo and I stole off to Brighton for the weekend.
Our Irish friend Peadar also came down to help keep us entertained.

We had a great relaxing weekend and it was over too soon. We went down to see Fulham play Brighton in a pre-season friendly on the Friday night, so we jumped on the train straight after work.

Other highlights included

• finding a GREAT wee bar, the Fish Bowl, that had party DJs playing on the Friday night and a cosy wee atmosphere
  
• finding a hard rock club night, the Engine Room, stashed in a basement down by the waterfront (any DJ that plays W.A.S.P. is a friend of mine!)
• realising Brighton has an active small boat sailing club (you mean I could live near London and sail too?!?!), and
  
• getting just a touch sunburnt on the beach on Sunday.

Lots of fun. As often happens to Londoners who go to Brighton on the weekend, we came back with plans to up sticks and move there as soon as we can! And maybe we will... but that commute is hard to get your head around. Also - perhaps the magic of Brighton is in part due to it not being where we live? It can't be a sunny party town all the time. Can it?

17th July, 2007, Shepherds Bush Empire, London

Perhaps it was because it was Sunday, perhaps we were tired, or perhaps its mostly because this Frank Black guy is a) a bit past it and b) really needs a decent band to play in front of.

Cut it however you like, but Frank Black's gig tonight (solo, not with the Pixies!) was a bit of a disappointment.
Highlights were few and far between, but I'll go with the 4-5 song acoustic set he did towards the beginning.

Frank included a version of "Hey" during which he forgot the words - sounds unprofessional, but in actual fact it was the one stand out moment - Frank's cool handling of the gaffe showing something of his real character.

But, and there had to be one... once the electric backing band joined him, it reduced to more or less illegible punk screaming. Well that's how I called it, seems a bit harsh now I go back and read this review.


We left before the encore because a less crowded bus home was more appealing.

Adrian's gig score - 2 / 5. Really, this one was only for the fans.

OK so some people (well, one person) are forever pointing out how my personal website, iceknife.com, has been saying "This site is undergoing a major revamp - please bear with us!" for simply ages.

I have finally begun designing for the Web 2.0 release of iceknife.com.

You are no doubt thinking - what does that mean? Well I am glad you asked.

I want to achieve three things with this upgrade:

1. I want to move towards utilising public API whenever possible;
2. I want to update technical specifications to the current version of, well, everything;
3. And I want it all to validate and render mostly identical across browsers.

Thats all :-)

Here's a very first shot at the layout.


[click on above to see full size]

I'd love any feedback from any one. Anyone? Is anyone out there?

Summertime rolls on, and tonight was another outdoor gig infusion, but this time with a difference. We'd never heard of the main act... we paid to get in based on his support band.
And the venue. More on the venue later. First the band:

Beth Orton was I admit the primary reason for going in the first place. Ethereal vocals, a good grasp on the fundamentals of great songwriting and an adept acoustic artist. And hey, if the Chemical Brothers choose you to be their voice... you got something going on.

Bernard Butler played guitar for Suede. Remember them? I had their first album because of the song "Animal Nitrate". I used to love that tune when I was growing up, and I could vaguely remember the guitars being not too shabby. Luckily I remembered right. They were pretty cool then, and they're pretty solid now. Nice bluesy tones.

and then there was Bert Jansch. Turns out for a Scottish dude with 25 (yes 25) albums under his belt spanning 4 decades and having influenced everyone from Bob Dylan to Neil Young, he can kinda play! Classical, fingerpicking, blues, country - if it gets played on an acoustic guitar, this guy helped write the book. I had never heard of him before, but after a stellar performance in a great venue with brilliant support musicians - I have to say - much respect Mr Jansch.

Here's a sneaky pic of Beth Orton doing what she orta [sorry! :-)]


(One of the things I like best about music is you can take this sort of gamble - music is a kind of meritocracy - because X and Y are good, and they rate Z, thus Z must rock! and in this case it were never more true)

My friend D pointed out the new Flight of the Conchords TV series.

I have only heard these guys in audio before, their radio set on the BBC was really funny! My first look at the show looks just as good.

Have a look at this latest scene from their 4th episode on HBO:
[you may need to click on the Play button]

OMFG. Just in case there was any doubt - Metallica know how to rock!

Last night we went to see Metallica at Wembley (you can buy the gig or you can email me for it). We also heard a couple of support bands. First up was Machine Head (very loud, but too messy, their sound was just a big wash of growl and if there was a tune in there somewhere.... it got hidden!) and just before the main act was H.I.M. (appeared to have tunes but got booed off the stage - however their cover of Wicked Game by Chris Isaak was cool!).
Then it was show time. And what a show.
These guys have a wicked rapport with the crown (Mrs P was so blown away by that) and played most of the songs I wanted to hear. There was one track, one of the new ones, think it might have been The Memory Remains, James Hetfield got the crowd to sing the melody. Alone. For about 2 minutes straight. So loud. The band were so visibly stoked with the crowd response. It was a very powerful performance that lived up to everything I'd every hoped this band would be.
Here's the set list for you people who care about such things.

Creeping Death
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Sad But True
Disposable Heroes
The Unforgiven
...And Justice For All
The Memory Remains
The Four Horsemen
Orion
Fade To Black
Master of Puppets
Battery
- - - -
No Leaf Clover
Nothing Else Matters
One
Enter Sandman
- - - -
Whiplash
Seek and Destroy

Thanks to D and Mrs P for rocking with me, especially D who paid the price!

Yesterday J0 and I went to the Live Earth concert at Wembley Stadium in London. Brilliant show.

It was a nice hot day with plenty of sun, we had tickets in the Club Wembley section (VIP area of the stadium, even has comfy leather seats!) and a top view.

The concert itself was surprisingly well organised and ran more or less perfectly to time.

Some personal highlights: Genesis, Snow Patrol, Black Eyed Peas, Duran Duran, Metallica, Foo Fighters and for the very first time in my life: Madonna. I missed most of the Beastie Boys in the beer queue, but J said they were cool too. All those bands were brilliant. There were heaps of others too (Red Hot Chili Peppers for a start) but those ones were the performances that really stood out. Metallica and James Blunt and some others even jammed with Spinal Tap!
All in all a great day out.

And we're gonna change our light bulbs to be more efficient. Cheers Al Gore, good gig.