I’ve seen Pink in concert before – but it was many moons ago, back at the Manchester Apollo. In fact, having checked back, it was pre-D4D that I went, which gives a fine range on how long ago it was.

Anyway, at that point it was small venue and her first tour in the UK. She was fantastic then, but the stage was pretty minimal.

What a contrast to this tour. The Funhouse tour is – to say the least – spectacular, and a world away from that first tour. Right from the start, as Pink comes out of a magic box, you know it’s going to be something special.

I won’t give away the surprises in the show – suffice it say there’s a couple of superb covers of tracks I honestly never thought I’d say that about – but it’s a spectacular in every sense of the word. The really impressive part is where Pink also goes up on a trapeze – while singing “Sober” – and does so perfectly, even while doing the drops etc. It’s a truly impressive sight.

In fact, the entire show is stunning, from the lights to the multi-video-screen backdrop, the runway out into the audience, the trapeze and ropework, the entire stage set – it’s just stunning.

Well worth going to see if you get the chance.

Now here is news of a tour I’d love to see…

Nine Inch Nails and Janes Addiction, on the same tour.  (And of course it’s already going by the nickname NIN/JA, which is cool too)

When I go to see a concert – or even watching music programmes on TV etc. – one of the silly things that always impresses me is that the singers remember all the words.

For me, writing something down is the best way yet to forget it. It’s somewhere solid (even if that is only somewhere like here) and it’s somewhere I can find it again. So if I write it down, it’s effectively gone from my head.

That’s why (for me) it’s better to keep ideas in my head, rather than writing them down as an aide memoire – because it won’t aid me, I’ll just forget the entire thing.

So I find myself repeatedly in awe of the people who still know their lyrics, who can still produce them repeatedly at any given performance with seemingly no notes, reminders, hints or clues. To me that’s just awesome, regardless.

So what do you find yourself in awe of?

Over the Festering Season break, and as part of an impetus to get me back to the gym, I invested in a new MP3 player – the Sony Walkman S638F, with 16Gb of storage. Equally, my last MP3 player (purchased before I even started D4D™!) has now disappeared – although I’m sure we’ll now find it this weekend – so there was another valid reason to buy a new one.

Yes, sure, I could’ve bought an iPod instead, but considering I only paid £85 for it, I couldn’t have got a similar spec (or even a better spec) one for the same price. Plus well, I’m not a massive fan of Apple’s stuff anyway, and I’d rather have something different. The Walkman had a damn good review in the Register, and fitted in with other requirements as well, so it was pretty much the obvious choice.

And I have to say, I’m really pleased with it. The sound quality is spectacular – having been tested on some of my favourite tunes, I’m tempted to say it’s actually the best music player I’ve had since the old Panasonic ‘cobra top’ ghetto-blaster (which still lives on nearly fifteen years after purchase, and is an evil beast of a thing that used to be able to drown out the next-door pub’s disco-night)

As per my last post on MP3 players and storage (back in 2005) I really don’t see myself filling up that 16Gb unless I also download some videos from the BBC iPlayer site to watch on it while at the gym. I might fill it- you never know- but at the moment I’m using 7.5Gb of the available space, and that’s got enough variety to keep me going all week.

We’ll see.

But in the meantime, if someone’s looking for a new MP3 player, the Walkman ‘S’ range comes heavily recommended.

While I’m nowhere even close to being an Apple® fanboy, I do use iTunes for a significant portion of downloading. (particularly when I also use eMusic, which I believe is now owned by iTunes) As such, I’m pleased to see that they’ve announced that iTunes is going to be DRM-free, with 8 million of its 10 million tracks now available without any DRM, and the rest over the next few months.

DRM is (basically) copy protection – it’s the media industry’s way of saying “You can buy our stuff, but we’ll still tell you how you can – and can’t – use it”. It’s horrifically flawed, and something I’m fairly passionately anti at the best of times.

As a perfect example of this, we’ve both recently bought new Sony MP3 players and wanted to put music bought on iTunes onto them. Only because of DRM, you can’t. Well, you can if you burn an audio CD of the downloaded files, re-import them into [Music player of choice] as MP3s, and then put them on the player, but that’s circumvention of the DRM, and thus naughty. You’re using a file you’ve bought and paid for, but in a way that the music industry doesn’t like. They want you to buy it on iTunes and use it through that, but if you want it to go on another MP3 player, you should buy another copy of the same file that’s authorised for use on your MP3 player. Oh, and you shouldn’t be buying the album on CD and then ripping it to MP3 so you can listen to it on your player either.

It’s the same with other download services (and things like BBC iPlayer etc. too) which have historically been only available through Internet Explorer, so that they can use the Windows Media Player DRM – which is also why so many MP3 players etc. insist on using WMP 11, which has the latest/’greatest’ DRM modules on it.

So to me it’s a sign that perhaps the music studios and media producers are finally beginning to see some sense if they’ll allow iTunes to finally sell music without DRM on it.

Oh yeah, and tonight we’re down in That There Lunnun, seeing Tracy Chapman at the Hammersmith Apollo.

I just hope the people aren’t as annoying as last time round.

Whatever, I doubt we’ll be back in Norfolk much before 1am…