Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Dublin Bound

This entry is being sent from my Blackberry. These little devices have been in the news a bit recently, mostly because Alastair Campbell didn't know how to use one and sent an abusive email from his. Apparently these things are a status symbol and only the top tier of management are supposed to get one. How I've got one is a mystery to me. Go MyCompany!

I'm being sent to Dublin to teach, and due to the course being Monday and Tuesday, I've decided to make a weekend of it. And I get to catch up with a friend I haven't seen in many years.

Last night Chris Langston and I went down to the Zodiac to see three bands; Pure Reason Revolution, Ambulance LTD and the Dears. I'm pretty sure I'd seen PRR before, I think they might have opened for the Boxer Rebellion at the same venue last year. They were loud, clearly influenced by Pink Floyd and really good. I think they've even performed at Greenbelt. Those who came late missed out.

Next on the bill were a band I've discovered on BBC Radio 6, the Beebs indie rock station, Ambulance LTD. These guys are good. Hard to say what they sound like. Indie. Rock. You can listen to a lot of their stuff on their website. The opening track is a six minute instrument, which is a bit gutsy, and they started the show with the same track. The tragically short half hour set also featured the devine Heavy Lifting and Primitive (the way I treat you).

Finally we had the Dears. These guys come from Montreal and to me sound a whole lot like Blur. Others have said the Smiths. I don't see it. Or should that be hear it. I went to the gig on the basis of having heard the single Lost the Plot on Radio 6. In that song, lead singer Murray definitely sounds like Damon Albarn. In order to be more informed, I went out on thursday and did some research. The research essentially involved wandering down to Astleys, one of Wallingfords two record shops (it also sells appliances) and buying the album, along with a few others (some Bob Marley, some Joy Division and, scarily enough, I don't remember the fourth one. Clearly it meant a lot to me.). The research then moved on to the "I've got a new album and I'm going to play it over and over again till I'm sick of it and then I'm never going to listen to it again" stage. I go through this stage a lot. I suspect that I will be repeating the exercise just before Jim and I go off to see the Wedding Present at the end of the month. And I still don't remember the names of most of the songs...

Half way through the gig we sang happy birthyday to Georgie, the Chilean drummer. They finished the set with, I believe, the Last Romantic, or something like that. We cried out for more, they duly obliged and by 10.15 my night out had come to an end. Just as well as I got up at 4.30 this morning...

Now we will get the muddled auto signature that the Blackberry adds on.

See?


Sent from my Handheld Blackberry device

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoever administers the BES server at your company can remove the send from blackberry footer for you. Unless your blackberry is administered by your telecoms provider in which case you'll have to get them to do it.

Anonymous said...

You can take out the signature by going opening up Desktop Manager --> Redirector Settings. There's a place to edit your signaure, you can take it out if you like.

Here's a good resource website for Blackberry users:

Blackberry Cool