Thursday 25 February 2010

Just call me Mrs Weeks


If anyone out there has been reading my ramblings for a while you might have known that last saturday I tripped off to Brixton for the final night of the NME awards tour. It was saweeeeet!

First played the Drums, who I have posted about before. Lead singer Jonathan Pierce threw some crazy shapes (check him out in the blue shirt above!!) They were awesome - better than I expected them to be. One annoyance for me - and a randomer I struck up a conversation with due to our indignation at this fact - was that they didn't play 'saddest summer,' which is my favourite of their songs. But they bopped through obvious classics (well, as classic as you can get when you've only officially released one EP) like 'let's go surfing' and 'submarine.'

next up were the Big Pink - probably my least favourite of the night overall, but they were still pretty awesome, at times. They came on accompanied by sirens and masses of smoke - certainly these dudes knows how to make an entrance.
It's all a tad on the noisy side for me, personally, but there are some tuuuunes, 'dominos' is properly anthemic - definitely deserves its 'best song' accolade it claimed last night at the actual NME awards ceremony - and 'tonight' is good too. Though as a general blend I stand by what I said to a friend after a few songs, which was - "I like some of it, but let's be honest, it's music to take drugs to."


Then.. Bombay Bicycle Club... YAY... I love their album so much that there wasn't a single song they played that I wasn't happy about... We got quite close to the front for their set, but it was pretty mosh-ish - there was one amusing moment (well, amusing in retrospect) when I got pushed over and then sort of sat on, in the scrum. I did for a few seconds think 'well, it's quite a cool way to die, I suppose' whilst my friend Ellie screamed 'GET OFF HER' at the top of her lungs; and that random dude I chatted to earlier about the drums not playing 'saddest summer' also helped by pulling people away as well. What a legend! So once I regained my balance we decided to retreat a teensy bit further back.... But yeah bombay bicycle club are amazing, check them out if you don't know their stuff!!


That's Jack Steadman, Bombay Bicycle Club's frontman. This is my favourite photo of the whole night. HE'S SO SWEET! He just seemed genuinely surprised and grateful at the number of fans there were in the crowd who knew all the lyrics to his songs and were really into the performance.


Then last but by no means least the Maccabees, led by my future husband Orlando Weeks...


They were the only band playing that I had seen before, and they didn't disappoint... They were definitely better than the last time I saw them play, not that they weren't good then, so basically, a pretty damn good performance!! I did have quite a large 30 yr old guy standing in front of me at this point, who managed to crush my foot during a jumpy chorus, which left me a little disgruntled... Another contestant for my favourite song of the night was 'Precious Time,' one of their slightly older songs but an awesome one live, especially when almost the entire venue are singing along! Orlando (yeah, we're on first name terms.... pfft I wish) was so sweet, he thanked the crowd literally between every single song. Very humble considering they were the headliners!!

so, that was that!

It was the last night of the tour so at the end all the bands came back onstage to do some crazy dancing during the Maccabees last song, Love You Better.

I missed the last train home, so we had a few minutes of panic about where to stay - luckily I had some friends who were absolutely fine with us crashing at theirs! Probably more sensible than settling down on a bench in brixton for the night would have been!


I always write too much when I talk about gigs. I get a bit overexcited.. sorry! Hope everyone is good. Oh, and I now have

TEN

followers

yay.

go me?

Sunday 21 February 2010

retourné

I'm back...

France was lovely - much better than we were all expecting, to be honest!
Hard work (getting up at 8AM for lessons during my supposed holidays = not my top idea of fun) but really good regardless. I was staying with a french family, therefore 'totally immersing myself in the language.' It was a bit stressful, de temps en temps, when we just couldn't think ofanything to say, but it definitely helped my french, je crois...

montpellier's mini arc de triomphe






oh, and we had the most annoying tour guide. EVER.


he made us sing all these french songs... ON THE COACH when all we wanted to do was sleep / plug ourselves into our ipods.. An example of one is this sadistically changed version of a good old lion king favourite:

dans le jungle,
terrible jungle,
le lion est mort ce soir
(a wimbaway a wimbaway.. etc)

ok, you don't need to have a french degree to work that one out. If you're puzzled, try google translate.
C'EST TOTALEMENT DEGOUTANT, A MON AVIS!

oh, and the best weather we had all week was on the day we left. parfait!

I promise I will not use as much franglais as I have in this post usually... I guess I'm still in a frenchy mood...


a bientot. x

Saturday 13 February 2010

festivale

I haven't been around to blog in a while, busy busy as ever -

We have this crazy festival at school every year for lower sixth -

basically a weekend chocka-block with plays, concerts, art exhibitions, a fashion show, boys vs girls rugby...... et cetera. And we all wear fancy dress on saturday!

So that was last weekend,
SO. MUCH. FUN.

here are a few photo highlights...



Oh, I think I forgot to mention, we also do a conga around the pond...
Just to add a little more normality to proceedings.



So that is that.
Hectic hectic hectic
But so worth the effort!

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Tomorrow I am off to La Belle France - Montpellier.

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Will update on my return......

And a song to finish, just because it wouldn't feel like me if I didn't add some tooooooonage


It's a bit odd, but I really like it. First heard about this band, Everything Everything, when I was looking for something to do on New Years Eve. The Flowerpot in Camden put on an awesome night at the hmv forum with these guys playing, also with mumford and sons, johnny flynn..... ah, I wanted to go so bad, but it was strictly 18+ !!! dammnnnit.
But still, I discovered these Manchester lads, so not a total loss!

Au revoir, pour la moment x