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

Portishead at the Hammersmith Apollo, London, 10 April 2008.


Jo, D, Ishbel, Simon and me headed on down to Hammersmith for a gig we'd been waiting for nearly ten years to arrive. Portishead. You remember them. Anguish stretched taut over a jazzy guitar led threepiece, with a DJ thrown in. Hadn't done a new album in nearly ten years. For this gig, the new album, "Third", hadn't even been released. So many of the audience had little or no knowledge of the new tracks.

Hopes were high for a fantastic performance, and when the band came out, they seemed a bit rusty and a little uncomfortable. Sure enough, two songs in they went off stage for a technical mishap with one of the sequencers. They were off for about 5 minutes while roadies panicked on stage.

Then they came back and delivered a set that wavered from beloved memories stripped back to their bare essentials, through to the pervasively dark, stacatto sound of the new material. A stunning visual performance added to the mix, with a gorgeous live camera montage on the backdrops.

The singer Beth Gibbons has become a little more confident since 1998. But still we often found her with her back to the crowd, preferring to sway in time with the band. When singing she stands statuesque, transfixed in the lighting effects.

It was a very very very good gig. But it didn't hit the heights of Wellington on the "Portishead" album tour. Tonight, in London ten years on, the band lacked the lush contribution from a dedicated DJ. The new songs seemed harsh, jarring even. The overall performance was excellent, don't get me wrong, but Portishead sounded, well, less than we remembered them.

A wicked gig on balance, and we're dishing out the 5 out of 5. It wasn't perfect but it was undeniably strong.

Here are some of the best gig photos I've ever done. See all 27 photos from this gig.
Setlist:
Silence
Hunter
Mysterons
The Rip
Glory Box
Numb
Magic Doors
Wandering Star
Machine Gun
Over
Sour Times
Nylon Smile
Cowboys
==encore==
Threads
Roads
We Carry On

The Black Crowes at Brixton Academy 9 April 2008.



A few weeks ago on a typical Wednesday night, we went along to the Black Crowes gig at Brixton Academy. They came on on the dot of nine and played the jammy blues rock set you'd expect, focussing mainly on songs from "Southern Harmony and Musical Companion" and a few tracks from the newer albums whose names I don't think I ever knew.
Brixton was sold out, and when it became obvious to the crowd the Crowes weren't interested in playing their old hits, a number of people seemed a bit disappointed, J included. No "Hard to Handle", no "Twice as Hard" and no "She Talks To Angels". Luckily, A loves the Southern Harmony album, and they played most of it really well. And fair credit to the lads, they did a long 2.5 hour set including an encore.
The highlight of the night? Either "Remedy" or the only song they did from "Shake Your Moneymaker" - "Jealous Again".
Good gig, but a lot of punters went home wishing they'd heard a song they knew.

3.5 out of 5, unless you are a BC fan, then maybe you'd go for a 4.

See all 11 photos in a slide show.

Hey all, just a quick note from my seat at Adobe's OnAIR London event.

OnAIR is a one day free conference from Adobe, showcasing their new AIR product (AIR allows you to deploy Flex and or HTML/CSS/JavaScript to the desktop, as a native application). Its cool tech and I think its going to be an emerging technology in the RIA space. These guys have been touring around Europe and there are still continental dates left - check the official site for registrations, dates, and all that.

As for this conference, its organised very well. Food's great, i'm on my third Red Bull and I already got the compulsory free T-shirt.

The compere for the day is Mike Chambers (site) who speaks well and has a good rapport. Mike's got a new book coming out on OReilley for Javascript developers.
Ryan Stewart gave a good quick Hello World for AIR using Flex, that was informative and easy. Then the morning was finished off with two gigs from Kevin Hoyt, who is doing the HTML/JavaScript side of things, not so interesting for me (I'm in this to get away from javaScrip! :-) but lots of interest from the audience. Its good to know you can do it, if you really must...

Afternoon sessions are about to kick off, some good stuff there.

The free WiFi is rock solid, the presentations have been concise, only downer so far is that I do feel like a bit of a loser with my not-Apple laptop out on display. But noone has been cruel enough to openly mock me..

Flex is going to be the next big thing, if it isn't already. Being able to compile Flex to a desktop app using AIR, then take advantage of file systems, clipboards, and run in no-network situations... all good. I'm still thinking most Flex will be in the browser - but if you need some of the preceding functionality, its great to know AIR is there.

Thanks Adobe - great gig, I really appreciate being part of it.
I'm thinking about Adobe MaxEurope 2008 in Milan now!