From The Pit

...for Tom - @ItsTomHimself - he's got his own radio show and everything. He's cool. Check him out. :)

140 characters isn't really enough to give a decent response, imo, so I thought I'd type it out here, for all to see. Just what comes to mind initially. I'll probably disagree with myself when I look back on this on another day.

I'd start with Opheliac (2006) first because her next album Fight Like A Girl is a continuation of sorts and promises to be "a bit more violent... bloodier [and]...a little more metal". Enchant (2002) is lighter and pretty much the opposite of that. Whatever people feel about Enchant or Opheliac, F.L.A.G sounds like it's gonna be amazing.

These aren't a "Top 10" as such but I guess they'd be the 10 that I'd probably suggest to anyone asking for a recommendations.

From the instrumental album Laced/Unlaced (2007):

• Unlaced
• Manic Depression

From Opheliac (2006):

• Opheliac
• I Want My Innocence Back
• Misery Loves Company
• God Help Me
• Let the Record Show

From Enchant (2002), which I love, if I had to pick:

• Heard It All
• Second Hand Faith
• Chambermaid

I would also check out the remixes of Dead Is The New Alive (from Opheliac) on the Liar/Dead Is The New Alive EP.

Does anyone find that making specific recommendations can turn out to be rather difficult? Depends on what someone is in the mood for I guess. I find that Enchant is good for relaxing to. Opheliac is part mellow, part "fighting music" (like "fighting talk" but with music) - the latter being good if I need to muster motivation for something so it's great for working to. And then there's her classical music...

This is actually really going to be about awesome comedy rock band Axis of Awesome (one to watch, imo) but first, a quick (closely related) tangent: Rob Paravonian's Pachelbel Rant

And now more recently, Axis of Awesome (Jordan Raskopoulos, Benny Davis and Lee Naimo) has come up with their 4 Chord Song:

I'm in no way any kind of expert on music theory so won't comment on the technical aspects here but more on the overall performance, which both acts have delivered brilliantly. I really like what these two acts have done, and the resulting medleys. Obviously both sketches are based on a similar idea and indeed, both routines do feature several songs in common: 

• U2 - With Or Without You
• The Beatles - Let it Be
• Bob Marley - No Woman No Cry
• Natalie Imbruglia - Torn

RobP deserves the credit for being the first, to my knowledge, to make use of the idea in this way but let me know of anything else similar I've missed via comments because they probably exist!

However, Axis of Awesome has surpassed RobP, perhaps simply because as a trio interacting with each other they've been able to achieve more than Rob was able to achieve alone- that, and the fact that theirs is longer and incorporates so many more songs which increases the "I-know-that-one!" factor.

I'm mostly disappointed that I've never had the chance to see either of these shows, in particular Axis of Awesome because while they've both been in the country before, Axis of Awesome were here as recently as November - if only I'd heard of them before then!

How a devoted Lacuna Coil fan lost interest, grew distant and then fell in love with the band all over again

Having been a long time Lacuna Coil fan (nearly a decade in my case), I've recently returned to the fold from what has essentially been a trial separation between the band's music and my musical tastes. I remember how many years ago when I first got into the band, if I was ever asked what my favourite band was then I would answer Lacuna Coil without hesitation. Since then my tastes have grown quite a bit and these days there a number of contenders for "favourite band" but I've once again started to feel about about the band like I used to.

Like many other older fans I was rather disappointed with their 2009 release Shallow Life. I suppose my issue was that it was in fact too shallow for my taste. In their effort to become more mainstream, radio-friendly and appeal to a wider audience I felt that they had lost their identity- while attributed to Lacuna Coil, the music no longer sounded like Lacuna Coil. I'm not saying that Shallow Life was bad exactly - indeed there are a couple of tracks that I do really like - but I feel they had lost sight of what had made Comalies (2002) (and even Karmacode (2006) to an extent) so successful.

To be fair, to some extent every band will have a desire to expand their fanbase. Also, every band must eventually get bored of playing the same old kind of stuff and will yearn to experiment- and if not out of boredom then in the interests of survival. So while I no longer felt any love for the band's music, I still loved the band itself and kept on listening to their back catalogue- and hoped that this was just a temporary deviation from the quintessential Lacuna Coil.

It would appear that my faith in them has been rewarded. At two recent gigs, at Oxford Academy (23/9/2010) and at the Borderline (9/10/2010) I've watched them perform a number of their classic songs from their first three albums. In particular it was a wonderful treat to experience the intimate Borderline gig featuring both an electric set and a special acoustic set.

Once again, I confidently declare myself a huge fan of Lacuna Coil and wait in restless anticipation of their next album. Perhaps there'll be surprises in store when they finish touring Shallow Life and get back into the studio. So the message to any veteran Lacuna Coil fans who may have jumped ship, now may be the time to clamber back aboard.

At last have been able to see a Smoke Fairies headlining gig. I was not disappointed! This duo has an alluring ethereal quality about them, in both their sound and appearance. I first saw them supporting James Marsters back in May 2009. I was mainly seeing JM for novelty value: while I know him from his film and TV roles, I'd knew little about his musical work. Smoke Fairies was supporting, which was a stroke of luck because they turned out to be rather good.

I had been looking to go to a Smoke Fairies headlining gig ever since and so on Tuesday 21st September it finally happened. Shockingly the tickets were not all sold out (they should have, given how good the Smoke Fairies are) and I was able to get another for my girlfriend who I'd persuaded to join me.

If you're reading this, looks like things are working properly after the import of this from from Tumblr into Posterous. After some personal downtime, I'm up and running again and hopefully so is the writing- although uni and "real-life" may conspire to rob me of time for writing. Let the balancing act commence

Reasons for adoption of Posterous:

• Better social sharing and integration with social networks- i,e, Twitter and Facebook
  • or Posterous' implementation just looks prettier? LOL
• Integrated comments system
  • with Tumblr I had to tack on Disqus to achieve the same
• Ease of updating
  • sure, I can email into Tumblr but it doesn't seem to work as well as what Posterous promises. And while there is an Android app, it's third party and is sometimes temperamental
• Easier to include multiple media types in the same post
  • Tumblr defines separate media posting types - text, photo, audio, video, chat. Unfortunately it's not possible to mix these unless you use HTML mode, which I have from time to time- but if the aim is to get stuff published ASAP, then I don't want to be wasting time on formatting minutiae.

Best of all the autopost to Tumblr means that the old blog will automatically mirror this one here so from an external perspective, the only thing that will have changed is that this blog can now now be accessed from two places.

One concern I have though, is that I have my Tumblr blogs set to automatically post to Facebook and when this gets autoposted to From The Pit on Tumblr, it'll update Facebook so I may have to disable Facebook posting altogether for one of them because Posterous will also update Facebook. Also, there is no way to select on a post by post basis (or blog by blog even, because Tumblr's Facebook integration seems to be account-based)  whether I want this to happen.

I may have to delete the superfluous Facebook update manually. Twitter integration on the other hand does appear to allow control on a post-by-post and blog-by-blog basis, thankfully.

An easy solution I suppose would be import my main blog too and disable Tumblr's Facebook and Twitter posting altogether. Will see how this one goes first.

Update: OK, seems that Tumblr doesn't obey blog-by-blog Twitter posting settings

Click for my photos from Sonisphere 2010. Featuring: Alice Cooper, And So I Watch You From Afar, Delain, Turisas, Anthrax, Lacuna Coil, Placebo, Sabaton, Tim Minchin, Love Amongst Ruin, Turbowolf.

See my thoughts on Sonisphere at the Best Buy blog

A reminder of Penn & Teller’s [ @PennJillette & @MrTeller ] amazing show that I saw on Wednesday 14th July at the Hammersmith Apollo. Penn & Teller are a perfect fusion of amazing magic and comedy double act: they are perfect in their roles with Penn as the funny-man and Teller as the straight-man.

The night begins with Teller standing with a box over his head. Penn speaks to a volunteer invited onto the stage about her glasses. He asks for them and puts them into the breast pocket of his jacket. They discuss how important glasses are to those of us who need them. Penn goes over to Teller and introduces him. Going back to where they were, Penn proceeds strike repeatedly the pocket in which he’d previously put the woman’s glasses… but they’re not there anymore. Going over to Teller and breaking the box apart reveals Teller wearing her glasses. They are returned to her and she confirms that they are indeed hers.

That opening trick was looked a simple one but it was still more than enough evidence that the show was very much worth the cost of admission. 

Some other memorable parts were Penn’s nail-gun “memory” trick and the fire swallowing at the end. Teller appears to be right in his idea that people pay better attention if he stays silent because I seem to remember his tricks better. For me, some particularly memorable Teller tricks were the needle swallowing, the shadow-flower cutting and one where he turns water into coins that are then turned into goldfish.

My only disappointment was that they didn’t do their famous Magic Bullet trick! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T581uwoOYho : Has that trick been banned or something?

Penn & Teller was the first magic show that I’ve ever been to see - and I still need to see Derren Brown - but the first magician anywhere that I became aware of was Paul Daniels who used to appear on BBC 1 quite regularly when I was little. I’ve always found magic interesting- at first because it was so interesting to watch but then as I got older also because I loved trying to work out how the tricks were done.

Meeting Penn Jillette and Teller after the show confirms that they are both really nice friendly guys. They went outside after the show to meet the audience, sign things and have photos taken- staying even when a light shower started. I found a laminated pass on the ground and went to Penn (the remaining hoard of people from our audience was moving onto Teller now!) to attempt to return it in case it was important and belonged to either them or their crew.

Mr. Jillette kindly let me keep it. I even got an indirect mention on Twitter :P

• A guy came up with an "all access" P&T pass that he'd found on the floor.He asked me if he could keep it.There's a man you can trust.

  — Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) July 14, 2010

• I let the guy who asked me if he could keep the "all access" P&T pass he'd found on the floor keep the pass.He proved he was trustworthy

  — Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) July 15, 2010

Yay, another souvenir- in addition to the t-shirt and programme that I’d bought. :)

 (supported by The LoveCrave) 

Friday 14th May 2010; 
Underworld, Camden; 

Rating: 4/5

Firstly, introductions. Direct from their Facebook group, Diablo Swing Orchestra is a Swedish avant-garde metal band. The band was formed in 2003. As for the main support, The LoveCrave is an Italian gothic rock band formed in 2004 (which I actually discovered before DSO when I was searching for something to replace Lacuna Coil- I didn’t find it in The LoveCrave but I liked what I heard anyway).

The gig began in earnest when The LoveCrave took to the stage and the previously sedate audience started to mosh. They started off with three tracks off their new album Soul Saliva: 1. The Other You; 2. And Scream; 3. Warriors. So far, so good, it looks their new album is going to be a success.

Then it was on to Can You Hear Me, a track from their first album The Angel And The Rain. 

What came next was a surprise to everyone who hadn’t heard it before. The LoveCrave performed a cover track from the new album: a goth rock cover of Michael Jackson’s Thriller! When Francesca Chiara announced it, my companion and I exchanged glances and did a double-take.

To finish off, the band returned to two old favourites from their first album after performing Get Outta Here, another track off their new album. It’s not exaggerating to say that the fans went wild when Little Suicide and Vampires were performed.

Now, if that was the end of the gig, I would have left happy… but no, now it was the turn of Diablo Swing Orchestra to dazzle us- and dazzle us they did. The energetic performances were amazing to watch and fans’ satisfaction was ensured with some brilliant tracks off their new album Sing-Along Songs For The Damned And Delirious interspersed with old favourites from their first album The Butcher’s Ballroom.

I loved every single song but I think my favourites from the set were A Tap Dancer’s Dilemma (new album) and Rag Doll Physics (old). They finished off with the track that first introduced me to DSO, Balrog Boogie, the first track on their first album.

Here’s the DSO setlist for reliving the memories:

1. Lucy Fears The Morning Star
2. A Tap Dancer’s Dilemma
3. Stratosphere Serenade
4. Heroines
5. Velvet Embracer
6. Rag Doll Physics
7. Poetic Pitbull Revolutions
8. Wedding March For A Bullet
9. Infralove
10. Vodka Inferno
11. Ricerca Dell’Anima
12. Balrog Boogie

Avant-garde indeed. The operatic, classical style vocals from Annlouice Loegdlund and the trumpet are certainly not typically found in metal. 

Whatever the art form, there’s stuff that makes me go mmmm and stuff that makes me go hmmm - the former means I like it while the latter means I find it interesting. Diablo Swing Orchestra and The LoveCrave delivered copious amounts of both- and for me, that’s an indication of a good gig. It’s the hmmm that will ensure that a band has staying power in my music collection and playlists. The problem with a lot of “mainstream” stuff is that even though there might be some “mmmm”. there’s not a lot of “hmmm”- so even if I do listen to it, I’ll very quickly lose interest.

It was a fantastic gig. It was my first time seeing Diablo Swing Orchestra and The LoveCrave live. I wasn’t disappointed. The only reason this gig didn’t get 5/5 is that I thought that the first support band Haken were a bit boring: the singer tried to compensate with showmanship but it would have been more effective if only I liked their music better. Haken failed to ellicit any hmmm or mmmm from me.

— Thus concludes the quickest review I’ve ever written… and apologies for the look of this blog. It’s a work in progress.

I’m just trying to entertain people, make a living and pay my rent, without having to get a job I hate and hopefully find an audience who’ll love and accept me and not think I’m a narcissist for wanting to be a performer and find true inner peace and that’s it.

Amanda Palmer, from “GaGa, Palmer, Madonna”

: add “inform” to “entertain” and replace “performer” with “writer” or “music critic” or “reviewer”… and that’s basically the intent behind this blog. Let’s see where this goes.