Partying?!

Well it's all happening here at Middlerun central. I finished my job yesterday (woohoo!), and I'm heading up to the Dale tomorrow. And then it's time for... partying?!

I think so!

Two long days

I have only two more days until I am finished with my crappy job forever! Then I'm heading up to the 'dale for Christmas, and then onto Woodford! Hooray.

Also I've uploaded another YouTube video here.

I can't think of much else to say, even though I haven't posted here in a few weeks. Meh.

Stairway To Heaven

At long last, here it is! The ultimate Stairway To Heaven video clip.

Stuff and other stuff

OK that last post took me like an hour and a half to write, so here's some somewhat shorter and more banal reports from the endless house of fun that is my existence:

1. Only three weeks till I leave my shitty job! WOO!
2. I just finished reading Animal Farm. A great and scary read.
3. I've finished all the story missions in San Andreas.
4. That is all.

The Pink Floyd Experience

OK, I've had a week for my mind to pull itself together so I'll fill you, my thousands of loyal readers (ha!), in on the details of the Pink Floyd Experience. Because I can tell you're dying to know.

The show opened with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond Parts I-IV", which nicely introduced the band to the audience. It was all reproduced very faithfully: the atmospheric keyboards, the haunting guitar solos, the solid drumming. The singer had a pretty different voice to both Roger Waters and David Gilmour, but he still sang really well. And it was pretty cool to see a big Maori bloke come out and do the saxophone parts. Then they launched straight into The Wall: first the vacuuming scene at the beginning of the movie, then the explosive "In The Flesh?", and so on. I started getting chills during "In The Flesh?", it was awesome. And loud. Just the way it should be. Sadly no pyrotechnics, but that's safety regulations for ya... grumble grumble...

I'd been worried that they wouldn't do the full theatrical production of The Wall like in the original shows, building a wall across the stage and everything, so I was very happy to see the skinhead roadies start hauling out big cardboard "bricks". During "Mother", when the singer sang the line "Mother should I trust the Government?" somebody shouted "NO!" which made everyone cheer. After "Mother" they suddenly switched to Dark Side of the Moon, which took me by surprise - I knew they were playing both albums in full, but I assumed it would be back-to-back, not mixed up. They played the first five tracks of Dark Side, and then came back to The Wall, playing "Goodbye Blue Sky". This was probably the only song in the whole show that I didn't find that good. The song itself is great, but I got the impression that the guitarist hadn't had enough practice. I think really it's meant to have two guitar players, and they only had one, so maybe that's why it wasn't as good as the rest. They never did "What Shall We Do Now?" which was a bit disappointing, since it's such a cool song, but whatever. Can't have everything.

Towards the end of the first half of The Wall, I suddenly realised something: they had hardly built the actual wall at all. It's meant to be finished at the end of the first half, with the last brick going in at the very end of "Goodbye Cruel World", symbolising the main character Pink's self-imposed isolation from his "cruel world", but there it was - just a few bricks in the corner of the stage. What was going on?

After "Goodbye Cruel World" was the interval, which is a good opportunity to deviate from my run-down of events and mention the singer again. Aside from having a great voice he was good at the theatrical stuff. During "One Of My Turns" he did a pretty good imitation of Pink's antics in the movie, trashing his hotel room. He got an acoustic guitar that was on a stand nearby and smashed it to bits which was cool. Actually it looked like my cheap-ass acoustic...

After the interval they did the rest of Dark Side, which is presumably why they delayed building the wall. So they built the wall during the second half of the show. Kind of ruins the metaphor a bit, but whatever. Can't have everything. The second half of the show was as phenomenal as the first, with huge applause after the second solo of "Comfortably Numb". The megaphone bit of "Waiting For The Worms" was great too. "The Trial" was dramatic as ever, with prison bars being reflected over the singer's face onto the wall.

My mind was blown. The Pink Floyd Experience rocked the fuck out, and miraculously removed some of my regret that I am too young to have ever seen the Floyd live. Seeing that wall come crashing down wrapped up what was three of the best hours of my life.