Flip Video is never going to give you a rock event experience- the picture is impossibly grainy, it is hand held and shaky, and the sound is awful - with a bizarre bias to recording the laughter and clinking glasses around you over the 100dB+ of stage generated music.
It is really just to give you a glimpse of the ghost of a concert past, something to excite the synapses of your own memory and fire them off. Or to imagine the possibilities.
Photographs are much better records from this type of event - here you get the artist telling a story, seeing things that others didn't, and enabling anyone to hear those stories (in the ultimate of ironies) with their eyes and imagination, even though it is primarily a story of deafening walls of sound.
Luckily photographs can be deafening to your senses as well.
Share them round!
Update on gig:Speed Orange and Slabotomy raised over $2800 for the Peter Mac Foundation in memory of our friend and colleague Richard Samson. A record 300 people were at the charity gig, filling the John Curtin Bandroom to the brim.
When you live in Melbourne, Winter brings cold mornings, long nights and an infinite amount of AFL football on your TV screen. But it brings good things too - and the annual Winter Charity gig for the Lonely Planet band and friends Speed Orange is a very good thing.
This season our charity is the Peter Mac Cancer Research foundation - in honour of their care for our friend and colleague Richard Samson, a tireless band supporter who lost his battle with cancer early in 2011. There'll be a little bit of Pixies just for him.
We'll also be saying goodbye to some long-time band members who have left the company amidst the move of our website business to London:
Vivek Wagle, Website editor, the former band manager, a lead guitarist, arranger and singer of punk and power-rock alike is heading back the USA with the band member he married Janet B.A small part of Vivek will remain with us in Australia, as he has left his beautiful 1984 BC Rich Mockingbird in mine and Noah's care.
Dave Burnett, singer and guitarist, unequalled fan of the Beatles and all things British in music is seeking new shores in Melbourne to practise his content technology wizardry. His heartfelt version of London Calling when the BBCW bought us is still talked about today.
Songstress Katie Marcar (my favourite was her brilliant job on The Grates 19-20-20) is going to practice her web-mastery somewhere in Melbourne. Her harmonies are going to be missed, but she has whipped up some magic to go out on.
Tony Jackson, lead singer, composer and musician for both Lonely Planet TV and his amazing band Speed Orange will be practising his creative crafts in Australia somewhere - Melbourne hopes to keep him!
Ryan Sweeney, who regularly opened for Slabotomy with his band Roostar will be missed by LP and the Slabotomy crew for his powerful lyrics, great guitar riffs and that harmonica.
Maureen Wheeler, our patron and founder of the original LP band has of course gone beyond the Lonely Planet - we missed the chance to honour her and Tony when they sold their shares, so this gig is for them too. A little something special to toast them is planned (clue: see the gig name).
And of course, I'm taking my Stratocaster and busking for work somewhere in Melbourne too.
Slabotomy, as the outworking of a very creative community of musicians at Lonely Planet, has a special Dr Who quality, in that it has regenerated many times over the last 2 decades, but this is definitely the last show with this lineup.
Expect fireworks. 4 sets from 8pm to midnight.
That amazing poster is the work of David, Bruce, Will and the team at R+R in New Zealand, who have once again given their genius to our cause and made something extra special for the last blast-off gig.
Guitars probably look pretty much alike to the average person. Pointy bit, sticky bit, chunk you strap on and strum. But in the world of the apprentice guitar-nerd, the simple shape, colour and features of every guitar evoke stories, memories, emotions and a thirst for more knowledge. A lot like my other passion for racing bicycles.
A bunch of emotive moments from movies have been coming back to me lately, as the Lonely Planet band have been rehearsing and performing for the summer season. I've been having these "that's just like the scene in ..." deja vu feelings. All of these movies make me want to leave this keyboard this instant and pick up the Strat instead - no other instrument is as evocative for me.
Rules of the list are that it can't be a movie or show that is actually about a real band. Thought I'd get to 10, but stalled at #8. All debate duly welcomed!
1. Wayne's World (1992) - "It will be mine - oh yes - it will be mine"
An iconic moment in this much-loved movie. The best guitar playing is undoubtedly Cassandra's band, but Wayne's attainment of the white Fender Stratocaster (which he refers to as Excalibur) in his local music shop is a triumph.
I have come to realise that as a wannabe guitarist you very much need to have one good "May I help you?" riff in your fingers to have ready when you are sifting through your local guitar store and require some assistance. Stumbling over an open G just is not rock. Wayne of course is the master.
The other two required riffs (just in case you were wondering) are the "I've just turned my amp on" riff at rehearsal (call this your signature chord, ideally timid people will jump when you hit it); and the "sound check riff", a longer arrangement which is the rock equivalent of a dog urinating to mark its patch on stage. Lenny Kravitz serves me well at this time, but I will admit deep jealousy at my Slabotomy friends Vivek and Ian's sound-check virtuosity.
Since this is the internet, I'm duty bound to bootleg the video of the "May I help you" moment:
2. This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Nigel Tufnel is my hero - and in 2011 (11/11/11) it is proposed to hold the first global Nigel Tufnel day. Responsible with a simple slip of the apostrophe for the infamous 18 inch stonehenge, he explains why when I see a Gibson or Epiphone Flying V guitar, a strange voice in my head goes "yeah, I could do that..."
I should probably aspire to a more respectable V-playing hero like Albert King.
Anyway, Spinal Tap as a shocking spoof of everything bad in rock music is actually a wonderful taste of what joy you can experience on stage, with a guitar strapped on and your amp turned to 11. Well, 5 actually, or Ian gets on my case.
3. Back to the Future (1985) - "whatever you do Marty..."
Episode 1 - Marty goes up to Doc Browns laboratory, and finding him not at home proceeds to do what every teenager who has ever watched this movie wants him to do, urges him to do - plug that guitar in, and turn it up. You know exactly what is coming, and it still takes your breath away, crummy 1980s special effects and all.
The guitar is a weird one, you don't really see it much - sort of a futuristic thing you'd expect to be lying around a mad inventor's laboratory. But it's not the guitar, it's the moment - clearly it's Marty's "I am plugged in" rehearsal opening chord.
4. Back to the future (1985) - Johnny B Goode
"Alright guys, this is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes and try to keep up." Like some kind of incantation, Marty's words haunted me for years - what did that gibberish mean? Sounded very cool though, and seemed to work for the band. A famous Chuck Berry song, Johnny B Goode was not written until 3 years after the scene in the movie was set, which adds some humour to the moment.
I'm pretty sure it is a Gibson ES335 he is playing. So that explains my deep irrational yearnings for one, either in red or BB King black.
With luck the bootlegged video is still available for you to view on Vimeo.
A great scene from a terribly cheesy movie about a kid (a karate kid no less ;-) who drops out from the Julliard music school and goes on the road, ultimately acting out that great old country song The Devil Went down to Georgia in a battle with Satan's own guitarist - who just happens to be Steve Vai. Who is quite probably the right guy for that role.
Ry Cooder played all the guitar for Ralph Macchio in the movie - I won't linger in the guitar pseud's corner for long (because there are plenty of weird looking guys there already) but needless to say the music easily overcomes the plot, and I am always a sucker for a bit of redemption. With a Fender Telecaster you say? With the blues? I'll have an extra helping thankyou. And if I find myself in the same situation at some stage, I'll be looking around for Travis to help me out.
If you have the patience, the final duel scene can be viewed here:
6. The Blues Brothers (1980) - Ray's Music Exchange
I've written about this before, and of course, I own that very guitar in the picture. There is so much great guitar and bass playing in the movie, and yet it is in the background to the two main characters Jake and Elwood. I like the way Mad Guitar Murphy, Steve Cropper and Donald Duck Dunn are away from the limelight but drive this movie all the way home.
Doubtless a trained psychologist would observe that standing in the background being super-competent is akin to my own approach to life, which occasionally I have learned to overcome, ironically recently with the Lonely Planet band.
7. Oh Brother Where art Thou? (2000)
Hmm - the blues again. Guitars again. Wikipedia does a good summary of the circumstances in which a fictional character is crafted from the real bluesman and the legend of Robert Johnson cutting a deal with the devil (seeing a pattern yet anyone?):
"In the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? there is a character named Tommy Johnson (played by Chris Thomas King) who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar. He plays accompaniment for the Soggy Bottom Boys (a band consisting of the film's three main protagonists plus Johnson) on "Man of Constant Sorrow".
The character of Tommy Johnson in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is reminiscent of the real Tommy Johnson, who used to talk about how "he sold his soul to the devil" at a crossroads in return for making up songs and playing the guitar. The character plays a number of songs by blues musician Skip James. The character was not based on the better-known bluesman Robert Johnson, as some have speculated."
99% of the music in the movie is bluegrass or country, but a couple of soulful moments are captured when Tommy gets to play his guitar. A solid reminder that the beauty is in the simplicity of life - so few notes, so few words, so much meaning. Another thing for me to aspire to I suspect, as a master of too many words and too many things.
8. School of Rock (2003)
This movie ticks all the boxes - humour, music and good old redemption again. How exactly Jack Black manages to make all those instruments work without alerting the entire school district with the noise is a practical detail I am prepared to ignore.
My favourite scene is where the kids start to jam for the first time - Zach on the Flying V guitar, and Lawrence on keys. I recall the joy of the first time I played an electric guitar, fresh from 18 months ago when Rich Durnall handed over his vintage Strat and said "try this". I have observed the same wondrous look in many people's eyes since - the capacity to make so much noise from just a little strum!
To see Noah actually play in a real-life school of rock right here in Melbourne through 555 Music is a weird bit of life imitating art. And long may life imitate art, I say.
Huge night raising money for Child Aid, a Planet Wheeler foundation supported project working on child literacy in rural areas in Guatemala. Great crowd, great music, and a wonderful event.
Lonely Planet's rock collective Slabotomy followed three great bands - Tony Jackson's Speed Orange; Ryan Sweeney's Roostar; and a trio of bluesmen with Travis Winters at the helm.
Here's the first photos in - shot by renaissance man Jamie Supple. I apologise in advance for curating a sub-set that include far too many of me ;-)
These artfully lit shots are from Mark Broadhead and his magic Nikon.
Every year the LP Band gig at the Espy’s Gershwin Room gets bigger and bigger. In June, we’ll need your help to make this the best event ever.
This time, we are supporting Child Aid in Guatemala – a Planet Wheeler supported project recommended by LP authors Lucas Vidgin and Danny Palmerlee. They give rural Guatemalan children access to books, build community libraries, train teachers, organize literacy programs and get kids back into school.
We are honoured this year to share the stage with some astonishingly talented musicians in the Lonely Planet community:
Speed Orange, fronted by Tony Jackson (also legendary producer of many LPTV soundtracks)
Roostar, fronted by Ryan Sweeney (he played the Espy only this week in fact)
Slabotomy will take the stage around 9pm with two ambitious sets of rock/pop/jazz/fusion. We’re proud to introduce several new musicians alongside the long-timers this time around.
You can also help out by Tweeting and Facebooking an invitation. Or, for the old-school, just tell all your friends! It’s a great cause, and we couldn’t be more excited. Let’s make this a night to remember.
P.S. Thanks to David and Will at R+R Communications in NZ for the awesome poster design
A great story - told well here on Wikipedia. Keith Moon, having taken enough drugs mixed with alcohol to fuel a lifetime of TAC adverts, collapses on his drums a second time and is carried off-stage 2/3 of the way through the Who's set at the Cow Palace on their USA tour in 1972.
Pete Townsend asks the crowd "can anyone play the drums?" and one guy steps up to help out. The rest is rock history.
In the new world of iPads and eBooks, it is my dream that I will be able to consume brilliant books like When Giants Walked the Earth while accessing matching embedded video and audio content on every page. This would be the video I would wish for if they had actually mentioned their 1972 tour to Australia, when they played in Sydney!
An additional take on the story can be had here on ABC's 7:30 news piece featuring Ted Harvey's exhibition of his 36 year old concert photos rediscovered in 2008.
We've just got back in from a great afternoon gig by Nick Thorpe and the new wave/ country/ rock Prayerbabies at the Union Hotel in Brunswick. I am Melbourne hot, but still burning enough to unleash 'mental of Middle Park' on the world being created and enhanced by the socially transmitted disease foursquare.com. And their ilk (you know who you are).
As I surveyed the rocking, family-heavy crowd having a fine time in a small pub in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, a recent tweet from @venessapaech ("I'll say it, foursquare is just plain silly") popped back into my brain and I couldn't help but consider how suckingk it would be to impose a yelping foursquare dot com culture on this treasure.
It's time we made some 'no foursquare' stickers with the slash through their logo, before it's too late. Foursquare (for those who have been asleep for the last 6 months) is a 'social network' that enables you to show off to your friends as to how cool you are, gather repeat visitor badges and perhaps even become the 'mayor' of the nearest coffee shop, with resulting retail discounts for you and all your friends. It reminds me of a digital strain of herpes in some ways.
I did not want your store loyalty card in exchange for my email address in 2001, and I don't want your gimmicky digital equivalent in 2010.
Naturally it's got all the vulture capitalist buzzwords du jour - cloud, lbs (not leg before stumps, location based services), social network, platform... (blogger feellinnnnggggg slleeeeeeeepppyyyyy...). And naturally it's worth more than the GDP of New Zealand.
It is about creating a world like Friends, the TV show, on your iPhone. And we know how real that was.
During the week I listened to an impassioned plea for the avoidance of temptation to join the current zombie economy, a great term describing the massive brainwashing people are getting this century into thinking that if you don't have a 50" flat screen Sony TV, XBOX, surround sound, $10,000 on your credit card, an iPhone 3GS, 2,000 Facebook friends, the new Commodore and a 6 figure mortgage, you are not actually living.
Fortunately the equal and opposite force of the zombie economy is a desperate rush for authenticity. As things get more fake, buying local produce, riding a bike (not a hipster fixie though) or going to live music becomes a life-enhancing thing. As it was for us this afternoon with the Prayerbabies.
I didn't need my dog food online in 2000, I don't need dozens of facebook friends, and I don't need to know where you all are this afternoon drinking your free Pabst Red Label that you got for checking in 10 times already this year. That ain't real. Now I think about it, the whole lbsn idea (location based social network, I made that up by the way, can I have some vulture capital now please?) was quite possibly founded on the Australian Kath and Kim social principle of 'Loogamoi, loogamoi', and it comes to mind they missed a real chance to launch loogamoi.com, an LBS plotting your movements around Fountaingate shopping centre. Instead some upstarts with a product called Fastmall beat them to it.
Make no mistake, I'm not an utter misanthrope - I was absolutely thrilled to run into Travis, Jason and Mel, there with kids in tow, but the thrill was in the coincidence and the spontaneity.
As luck would have it, the only foursquare action at the Union was the dancing going on (average age 4, main dance move, the square). Long may that be so.
The photo is technically rubbish I know. Standing behind 1,000 people at Melbourne's Festival Hall, most of whom seemed to be 6 feet tall, glaring lights, greenish cast, and only an iPhone to hand ... Mark_LP would be horrified. But the memory is locked away in vivid 3-D Blueray.
Being thumped in the chest for 90 minutes by John Paul Jones' bass (who clearly got in on Robert Johnson's contract with you know who - he looks 30!); entranced by the speed of Dave Grohl's man-possessed percussion; and jaw-dropped at the antics and vocals of Josh Homme. Did I ever imagine you could climb on the bass drum and whack cymbals while playing lead guitar?
Invited along as part of my musical education by Rich Durnall, I thank my lucky stars for the chance to see what amounts to one of the all-time greatest rock bands. The live act exceeded the 2009 CD's quality several times over, no mean feat. I came away with swirling metaphors of having 3 of the greatest geniuses in any one field of endeavour not only in the same room, but working together to create something few will hope to match. None came.
Supporting the superstars was Alain Johannes, no mean guitarist and musician in his own right. Interesting to see the contrast between 'great' and 'super-nova brilliant' on the same stage though. Half way through the night I was plotting to just come home, quietly pack the guitars away in a cupboard and retire quietly to less creative pastimes.
By the time we'd got back to the car, the chance to be just a 1% part of the emotional crash-cart that outstanding rock music can be convinced me to at least strum a few power chords in the morning. And as luck would have it, thanks to these little beauties, I could hear them.
Them Crooked Vultures live 10/10. Rich Durnall, teacher 10/10 . Hearos musician's ear protection 10/10.
I've written about Breaking Away as an important movie in my life, inspiring a fascination with racing bicycles, Italy and la dolce vita.
That was 1979. Here comes 1980. Last year of high school, and The Blues Brothers hits our NZ screens.
A year ago I rented the original 1980 movie to watch with Noah (with handy ear covers ready for the obvious bits), and was pretty disappointed. Sound was so-so, the picture was grimy, and the story hinged on the high points of musical performance, plunging into dull periods of conversation and inaction.
I recall yawning and reminding myself that memories can play tricks on you.
We rented it again tonight.
And discovered to our joy that John Landis has managed to pull together an extended edition with remastered sound, new scenes and extended dialogue in various places. It's back to being a classic!
What a tragedy that the original cut, tested in a movie theatre in Los Angeles and declared by studio executives as "only going to attract a black audience", has been lost forever. They forced Landis to shorten the movie so it required no intermission.
With its 30th anniversary next year, it's time to celebrate what the Blues Brothers did to create an interest in the blues for people like me as far from Chicago as it is about possible to get on this planet. This must be the greatest B-movie ever made, with more superstar cameos than the V&A museum cameo collection.
And to file under 'subliminal influence', Ray's Music Exchange (with the subsequent 'Shake Your Tailfeather' dance spectacular) has always been my favourite scene - check out which guitar the kid is trying to steal when Ray shoots 2 well-placed warning shots into the wall from the other end of the shop!
That's pretty much how I would have looked if I hadn't been able to take my black stratocaster that fateful day in April! And why going into music shops can be such fun when there are people browsing the shelves around you who, despite not being Ray Charles, Steve Cropper or Donald Duck Dunn, could highly likely still light the place up in an instant.
“It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.”
The band added Robbie William's Let Me Entertain You to the Espy set and went wild again celebrating the end of 2009 in style. Once again supported by Sparkle Motion, who performed a tight version of their Espy set and showed their musicianship.
Bunch of miscellaneous photos, as always biased towards Slabotomy's #5 guitarist.
Here's a taste of the skills of Mark Broadhead shooting bands and events.
A great audience filled the Gershwin Room at the Espy on a Wednesday night - mid-summer this time so lots of beer bought to keep the venue happy. The pool of friends and family from both the Thoughtworks band Sparkle Motion (who opened the night with a hard-rocking set), and Slabotomy who played 2 sets raised over $1200 for The Hotham Mission.
Tony and Maureen Wheeler came along to support the crew, and like most were amazed by the rotating talent on stage.
Photos are mostly from LP documentarian Mark Broadhead, whose skills at capturing such vibrance in next to no-light situations are renowned. Please excuse the obvious bias - I've only grabbed the ones with me in them, as I know Mark likes to have a bit of an edit before he puts them out in public.
I played bass on Hot and Cold, added a nerve tangling E on Song 2, held the G - F - G - Bb - F - G line for Lady Marmalade, some rocking chords on Dakota (my favourite) and was honoured to tinkle away behind Zjelko on a searing Creep. 6 notes, 5 songs, and another lesson in how to bring the house down from the gods of Slabotomy's theatre of rock.
Get this in your diary quick – the Espy is always a special night out for Lonely Planet and the band.
Joined this year by Thoughtworks' Melbourne band Sparkle Motion, it promises 3 sets of rock so good you won’t dare admit that you stayed home and watched NCIS Los Angeles instead.
If I learned nothing else this Winter, it was that the process of making music in a rock band is pretty damned spontaneous and collaborative - with changing requirements the whole time as singers come and go from rehearsals, too many guitarists of differing abilities attempt to play on the same songs, musical keys need transposing for different vocalists and instruments, and downloaded tabs proving to be largely misleading and mostly wrong. Some of the funnier moments were when the riffing of our talented lead guitarists and bass player started to go awry (it happened occasionally), and cries of "Jazz!" would go up, seemingly a code word for 'over-wrought bullshit riffing going nowhere here". Or maybe it's just that Tad has a big black Fender Jazz bass?
To the newbie, some rehearsals seemed to confirm every stereotype of rock music (think Spinal Tap), and as the resident 'Nigel' I would occasionally start looking for tiny stonehenges descending from the ceiling of the warehouse. But there is a mojo about a rock band that is so tangible you could use it to keep the 7:30pm Pizza delivery warm while a troublesome vocal is ironed out.
With this in mind, with great trepidation I suggested a little experiment as we kicked off the Christmas/ Summer band this week. An Agile story board - with suggested songs on cards, prioritised at a standup before each rehearsal, building up the set-list and eliminating the cries of "what's next?" and "where's the vocalist for this one gone?"
Would this kill the band's mojo? Plenty of software developers claim Agile does, but they don't work for Lonely Planet ;-) They're using their 'mojo' to build crap code somewhere else.
I spend much of my day job devoted to implementing Agile Software Development at Lonely Planet, where the fundamental principles of managing the delivery of software in a socio-technical fashion have a lot of parallels to the way I observed our band working - particularly getting started and getting organised each Thursday night, but also ensuring close teamwork from a multi-disciplinary musical group, and regularly reviewing what works and what doesn't.
Needless to say there was hue and cry from the artists about "it's not ROCK!" and "you can't organise rock music!"
It's always a little hard to tell among a dozen good-natured Australians in the presence of 2 dozen Carlton Bitter precisely when you are having the piss taken out of you (sometimes easier just to assume 'all the time'). Anyway, I was saved from humiliation by the real musicians grabbing the tools (board, cards, microphone, pens - see the photo) and in a matter of minutes we had the priority song-list for the night.
Someone quickly suggested we add the vocalist's name to the card. No cards would get played if they didn't have the requisite MP3 track to listen to, the lyrics on paper, and Tabs. Some cards got prioritised downwards for when our ace drummer is able to join the team later in the year. A card even got put in the 'not to be developed' column (Dave, we miss you already).
I'm fairly certain when my personal mini-stonehenge arrives it will have 'Scrum-master Flash' or a similar witticism etched on it to remind me of the evening - but anyway, we used to try to organise the set-list on an Excel bloody spreadsheet. Even I can see that certainly is not Rock.
I think when our little boy Noah asks the inevitable "what was it like last century Dad?", I will likely give him this DVD to watch. Provided DVD players still exist by the time he gets cheeky enough to ask such a question.
If I remember correctly, the 1970s were basically an oil crisis with rock music, the 1980s were an economic crisis accompanied by punk rock music, and the 1990s were a decade of better things, with at last some hope for the future.
The internet, mobile phones, cheap air travel, and the joy of being thirty-something.
Live Forever, the rise and fall of Britpop (made in 2003) tells the story of the UK before the year 2000 with a narrative knitting together the emergence of post-Thatcher liberal politics, personified by the young Tony Blair; music from Oasis, Pulp and Blur providing the soundtrack; Jarvis Cocker proffering the decade's street philosophy; London emerging as a fashion powerhouse again; and artists like Damien Hirst shoving dead sharks in tanks of formaldehyde to shock the art establishment globally.
The humour and drama that emerges from this video's astonishing interviews with the Gallagher brothers makes the whole thing worthwhile on its own. But you also get the reflective Damon Albarn of Blur, the insightful Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), and brilliant Ozvald Boateng - whose fashion sense fueled the whole 'Cool Britannia' sensibility, clothing and beyond.
My prized souvenirs of the era are memories of trips to London as a wide-eyed kiwi boy accompanying my fashion and street-savvy wife Lesley, plus a beautiful, tailored, purple shirt. Ozvald Boateng of course.
Astonishing lens on the world of rock music 1960 - 2000
Perhaps by my recent adoption of the electric guitar and a bunch of new friends who make up the Lonely Planet Band has made me biased towards learning about rock music?
I say that because I don't think I have ever read a book that grabbed my attention and entertained me for as long as this one.
Written in eye-watering detail, but not in an off-putting anorak fashion (as can happen with this sort of thing), the author brilliantly weaves the story of Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones from their beginnings in the industrial estates of the UK midlands, through to the full-on Led Zeppelin era, borne out of the rapid demise of the 'New Yardbirds'.
Mick Wall has the most amazing ability to drop in a few pages of handily italicised 'fly on the wall, truth-telling mate' prose just when you can't absorb any more facts or stories about each of the band members or the music they were developing.
There is some genuinely creepy stuff relating Jimmy Page's obsession with the occult, and you soon start to understand how the great rock bands all descended into drugs, booze, 'magick' and unreality in a desperate attempt to keep their edge in musical performance. Having dabbled in the smallest possible way in the experience of being on stage in a rock band, I can only imagine what it must be like to play to 100,000 fans in a stadium.
As the book proceeds, the tragic ending is telegraphed early by things starting to go wrong on tour in the USA in the late 1970s, a growing intolerance from fans of 25 minute guitar or drum solos (judged 'self indulgent crap' by the emerging punk rock movement), and an inability to reach the creative highs of the early years of the band.
It took a while to finish this enormous book - and I wished longingly for an accompanying soundtrack and concert footage. Mothership is the obvious choice as a tour through the years, and an amazing reminder of the soundtrack of my youth containing a great deal of Led Zeppelin indeed.
My favourite moment? In the early days, as it becomes obvious the combination of their musical talents is special, they formulate a name for the band. "It'll go down like a lead balloon" one of them speculates. "More like a bloody Lead Zeppelin" comes the retort. To avoid confusion of the pronunciation they change it to 'Led' and the rest is history.
The only thing possibly better than this book could be this movie.
Comedy gold as Vivek inducts me into the International Rock Guitar brotherhood (with Pete Townsend Windmill instruction) before we start the gig at the Espy hotel on Thursday 18 June, 2009.
More pics to come via Flickrfeeds. First up a set of pictures shot by Jamie Supple:
Four years in America on an immigrant worker's H1B Visa gave me a special appreciation that not all our compasses point to the same North on this planet - even though we speak the same language.
England and America - 'two nations separated by a common language' and all that.
Here's a few musings about then and now - mine, and some from people I know, who write like the virtuoso I long to be.
Disclaimer & Stuff
It's important to note that this is my personal blog. I currently work for Luna Tractor based in Melbourne in Australia, who have a website and blog of their own - everything in this blog, absolutely everything in all forms, is my own personal opinion about things I'm interested in - music, bikes, history, travel and suchlike.
If you're looking for stuff on agile beyond IT, software engineering, organisational change and space, head to the Luna Tractor website now.
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Flip Video is never going to give you a rock event experience- the picture is impossibly grainy, it is hand held and shaky, and the sound is awful - with a bizarre bias to recording the laughter and clinking glasses around you over the 100dB+ of stage generated music.
