Musicalmidget’s Blog

It’s that time again…how quickly this year seems to have passed.

I’m now home for Christmas meaning university work is on hold for a short while. This sadly will not be the case for long, I still have a little to do over the festive period. Thankfully however, not too much. That means I have some free time again, meaning, amongst other things, I can post a new blog entry. Hasn’t it been a while?

The last few months have been a little hectic, both with a larger amount of work at uni this term, and a few personal issues which were causing a few problems over the last couple of weeks. The Christmas holiday was much needed and I’m certainly glad to be home again for a few weeks.

I’ve spent the last few days catching up on various things that have happened whilst I’ve been away, both online (catching up on MyBB development, making some changes to MyBB Mods and Towers TV, etc) and offline (friends, family and so on). Similarly, I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last week or so preparing not only for Christmas Day tomorrow, but for Mums birthday, which is indeed today, Christmas Eve. We’ll be going for a meal shortly to celebrate. It’s often hard managing to find somewhere to go for a birthday celebration on Christmas Eve. Many places are either fully booked, stupidly expensive or both. This year however, we’ve had remarkably good luck. A pub on just the other side of town had spaces left today for meals and the ordinary menu still applies, as far as we know. The only flip side is that since the pub is out of walking distance, somebody has to drive. That would be me.

Tomorrow is obviously Christmas Day. I’ve been noticing in recent years how Christmas Day seems to change the older you get (I feel old just saying that). In years gone by I would be unable to sleep with excitement on Christmas Eve, eventually drifting to sleep and waking up first thing in the morning. Once my brother and I were awake, it was off to the parents room to wake them up and see if the Hogfather (Father Christmas to the non-Pratchett fans) had visited. In more recent years however, it’s been completely different. I’m still up late on Christmas Eve, but it’s not just excitement, it’s through choice. Either celebrating with friends or killing time on the interweb. Christmas morning is when it’s now our parents that wake my brother and I, because they’re excited and we probably wouldn’t be up until about lunchtime if left in our own land of slumber. Christmas shopping seems to get more stressful each year and the movies on the TV don’t get any better it seems. The one thing that hasn’t changed since the first Christmas I remember, is Christmas dinner. That never gets old…apart from the sprouts, they’re foul.

Whatever Christmas is to you, enjoy it!

Have a happy holiday!

I posted some months ago about the new Keane album which I was very much enjoying and mentioned that in October, I would be seeing them live here in Hull. That gig was on Tuesday night and it was absolutely fantastic!

It was great to take some time away from uni work on Tuesday to go and see one of my favourite bands kick off a UK tour in the very city I’m currently studying in. The night started with two support acts, both of which were great to hear. Support band Captain were a great choice to get the crowd in the mood before the set started. The music was great as always and was performed with such energy and enthusiasm by the band. New tracks sounded exciting and older tracks from the previous album sounded refreshed as if given a new lease of life. Lead singer Tom’s voice was up to scratch too, with not a note incorrectly pitched all night. There was a nice little surprise about half way through the set with an acoustic version of Your Eyes Open, which was also fantastic and offered a nice little contrast of style before going back into the action packed set.

I had unfortunately not had the pleasure of seeing Keane live before this week but many of those that had previously seen them live agree that this was the show of their career. I certainly thought it was excellent anyway!

Tonight is the night that I and many others have been waiting for. Tonight it’s the Freshers party at Asylum, officially starting off Freshers Week at the University of Hull. I and my housemates will be there religiously. Although we’re about to start our second year here (already!), we don’t officially become second years until registration next week, meaning we can still call ourselves Freshers for a few more days, despite going through all of this last year!

It doesn’t matter so much when all said and done. Anyone can go to the party, regardless of the year they’re in. We’re all looking forward to going out again and getting back into the university spirit, that is a week of insane partying followed by the reality of having to settle a week later and actually do some work. Yes, I did say the word…work. Scary, isn’t it? Personally, I haven’t been out myself much since the end of the first year, with the exception of a brief stint whilst in Edinburgh…and that was only to the club we were performing in earlier in the day, because they were nice enough to let us all in for free. Tonight it’ll be great to be out again enjoying Asylum to the max, with plenty of friends and some new faces too.

It really does seem strange thinking that in a few days time, I’ll officially be in my second year of university. It’s over a year since I arrived at uni for the first year, and it hardly seems like a few months when I look back. It certainly was a fantastic year. I enjoyed my first term in the halls with the Grant Hall C-Unit. I even enjoyed travelling to the uni from home every day (40 miles!) in the second year when I sadly had to leave the hall for personal reasons. I certainly hope the people joining us here this year have an equally special year.

I’ve been back from Edinburgh a few days now and I’m already looking forward to next year. The fringe was fantastic and I along with the rest of the band had a fantastic time. We played 10 performances in total at City Nightclub, plus another three short promotional shows out on The Royal Mile and a rather pointless session at Festival Square where a whole four people were around to watch us. Nevermind.

Audience numbers grew as the trip went on and we reached three figures on a number of ocassions, although we sadly only got 99 on a particular night. Doh! A fantastic 160 came to see us though at our final performance that was certainly one of the best of the trip not only because of the number of people in the venue but also the atmosphere during the night.

We had a reviewer from Three Weeks in the audience on one of the earlier shows. We’ve only just found the review. You can read it below.

Fancy a dance? First couple on the floor got £1.50 from the droll Yorkshire bandleader of this big band. Meanwhile, the meaty line-up delivered gutsy trumpet, saxes, trombones, wild-man drums, keyboards and bass. This was an hour of big band bliss with a trumpet section screaming with testosterone. No vocals, but they romped through everything from funk to bossa nova - including favourites ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Birdland’ - with such verve the ballads didn’t miss a singer. And there were funny moments too - like when one of the saxophonists raised her hand when the leader asked “Anyone here from Hull?” The club venue, with dance floor, tables and bar, set the scene perfectly for this dance band of delights. Other university music departments should be gnashing their teeth with envy.

I took along my new digital camera although to be honest I didn’t get many photographs. A small selection have been uploaded to the gallery however. No, I’m not on any of them in this selection. Yes, that’s intentional.

Is that hill supposed to be on fire?

Lot’s of people enjoying the heat in Princes Park. We were able to do the same on our last day!

Half the band performing at Festival Square. As you can see, it was such a busy place that the audience we’re fighting for seats!

The full band performing at City Nightclub. If you look closely, you can see my empty chair.

Bring on Edinburgh Fringe 2007!

Tomorrow I’ll be going away for ten days on a trip that’s been in the planning since early in the year. The big band from university will be heading off to Edinburgh to play at various venues around the festival time. There’s obviously lots of performing involved, but there’s also going to be plenty of time to enjoy the delights of Edinburgh too, a city I haven’t yet been to.

I’ll be equipped with my new toy, a shiny new Kodak digital camera, a set of brand new batteries and a 1GB SD card to get as many photo’s as I can whilst away. I’ll be posting some online on my return.

So, if it seems I’ve suddenly vanished into thin air, then I’m actually just away from home. I’m hoping I’ll be able to check my emails and so on from the hostel we’re staying in, although I can’t be sure of that yet.

Last month, I posted about a behind the scenes tour at Alton Towers which Andy and I had booked tickets to attend. That tour took place yesterday and what a fantastic day it was. We saw many things on the day, but here are some of the highlights.

The group were shown the vault of Hex whilst the ride was in motion and boy does it spin fast. We took a look in the control room of Rita and were taken inside the hydraulics shed to see all the equipment speed into action each time a train was launched. We took a look around the oblivion maintenance shed, saw the old Coaster Corner area of the park and were given the rare opportunity to climb to the roof of the flag tower for some astounding views of the park and surrounding areas. Later in the day we were able to see lots of materials from the Alton Towers archive, take a walk around Duel with the lights on and climb up the lift hill of Air for more brilliant views of the valley. As a bonus, we were also allowed to take a peak into the tent containing the old Black Hole rollercoaster, which is in the process of being dismantled and sent to a new park. Very little of the track work remains now, although the spiral is still in place. With the track gone, we were able to see how large the tent actually is, and it is indeed huge. A nice large attraction could surely fit in the space, perhaps in years to come.

Another great part of the day was meeing such a friendly group of people on the tour, some of whom are also members of towers related websites such as Towers Almanac and Towers Times. Additionaly, it was also good fun to be able to jump on many of the parks rides without needing to queue thanks to the excellent priority passes included in the ticket price. Those passes allowed us to ride all the rides we wanted to in a short space of time on a peak day! Fantastic!

Unfortunately, we forgot to take any photo camera’s on the day, so I grabbed a few shots on my phone. Subsequently the quality isn’t brilliant. However, we did get plenty of video footage which will probably be viewable soon. Plenty of other people from the tour also managed to get lots of photo’s which will also be on the web soon. I’ll post some links when they’re up. In the meantime, here are a handful of pics taken from my phone…

Today, Andy and I returned from what I’ve been referring to as The Lancashire Invasion, largely because of our “invasion” of Lancashire. See what I did there?

We’ve been doing a theme park tour of the UK this year, and after visiting many of the UK parks (Alton Towers, Drayton Manor, Flamingo Land, Pleasure Island and so on) it was time to visit the two parks up in Lancashire. So, early Monday morning we set off to Blackpool for our yearly visit to the pleasure beach. Rode most of the rides, saw the show Eclipse in the evening, making a great end to the day. We strolled down to the Blackpool Tower next, hoping to go up at the cheaper night rate. It was about a mile and a half to walk and no sooner did we reach the entrance to the tower, did all it’s lights go out. The tower closed for the night seconds before we got there. Bah! On the plus side, we did go past the Lyndene Hotel, used for the external shots of La Ponderosa in the Phoenix Nights TV series. Got some photo’s of that coming at a later date.

Anyhow, we had another early start this morning and set off early from Blackpool, to our next destination, Pleasureland Southport. This was a new park for both of us and it wasn’t too bad. A few nice roller coasters, although Cyclone was a little on the rough side. To our delight, it was only £10 for a day ticket instead of the usual £20. Quite a good job in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great day, but I don’t think there’s enough there for me to visit on a normal day and feel I’m getting my money’s worth for £20.

We were on the road again by about 3pm and it was on this long drive from Southport back to little old Doncaster, that we visited a couple of places that mean a lot in our little world. First was Bolton West services on the M61. A service station you’re thinking? What’s so good about that? It happens to be the very service station at which Peter Kay filmed “The Services” in “That Peter Kay Thing”. The station was also used in an episode of “Phoenix Nights”, where bouncers Max and Paddy drive to france on a booze run to stock the new club. This stop was the perfect mood setter for our next visit, the one and only…Phoenix Club! Yes, the real one (St. Gregory’s Social Club).

We had been joking about visiting the club for quite some time, but when we found out it was so close to the M61, we couldn’t just drive past without taking a look, so we set ourselves a mish to Find the Phoenix Club. The club isn’t actually in Bolton, where the Phoenix Club is set in the TV series. It’s actually in Farnworth which is outside Bolton and very convenient for us! Andy will be working on the video of the weekend soon, but in the meantime, it’s time to share some photo’s. Take a look at these if you’re wondering whether it really was the same club…

Anyone that knows me personally will no doubt know that I’m hardly the sporty type. I don’t play much sport, and there’s very little sports I follow. Tennis however is the exception, and as such I’m really loving being able to watch Wimbledon this year.

Britains new rising star in tennis is of course Andy Murray who has been playing some superb tennis recently. This evening though was probably his best achievement so far, winning against Andy Roddick in three straight sets. Wow! It’s great to see a new player with excellent talent, but it’s even better that he’s British. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of him in the years to come.

On the womens side of things, could there be a final without one of the Williams sisters in it? Yes, I think there might! There’s a pleasant suprise. I’m looking forward to both the final matches in about a weeks time.

On a non-tennis note, I’ve been playing with a new piece of software today. It’s called FastStone Capture and it’s very nice indeed. It’s just a handful of screenshot taking tools which are a little better than constantly pressing the “print screen” key and pasting into Paint everytime I need to take a screenshot. Plus, it has the nice ability of taking scrolling screenshots.

Perhaps you’re wondering what kind of screenshots I might be taking that would require such a tool? If you keep an eye on this space, you may just find out in a day or two…

I think I mentioned a short while ago that I’d been listening to the new single by Keane which is quite popular at the moment. Needless to say, I was quite impressed to say the least. So, I ended up buying the new album Under the Iron Sea. It seemed hard to believe that their new album could be as impressive as the previous one Hopes and Fears, but it was!

It’s a fantastic album from a very talented band. In fact, I’ve been so keen to hear more from them that I’ll be seeing them live in Hull when they visit in October. The tickets were only booked this morning but we’re already very excited!

Roll on October…

You can probably tell from some of my previous blog entries that I’m quite a regular visitor at Alton Towers, being a theme park junkie and all. This morning I got an email from the towers advertising the first three long awaited “behind the scenes” tours.

On 22nd July, Andy and I will be arriving at the park for 8 in the morning…it’s going to be an early start, but worth it in the end we hope. On arrival we join some of the technical teams preparing the rides for the day ahead, running the various daily checks and so on. Then we continue to one of my favourite attractions, Hex, to see exactly how it works. It’s then up the old flag tower for a stunning view of the surrounding countryside. All this in just the first part of the day!

We then get the rest of the day free to enjoy the park, with a priority pass for some rides I believe. At the end of the day we get a quick bite , the tour group meet up again and it’s off to see what happens at night, how the attractions are closed up for the night and so on. I also understand there will be an opportunity to look over some of the park archive material.

It really does sound like an interesting day and we’re both looking forward to it. It will indeed be a long day, on the park for 12 hours, with nearly two hours worth of driving at the start and end of the day. Hopefully it should be a great day though, and we’re hoping to take along some cameras, so keep an eye out for some rather rare photography…