NIN/JA Tour, O2 Arena
Posted: Thu 16 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking 1 Comment »Way back in the day, I was a big fan of Janes Addiction, but never got to see them live. Then they reformed and created a new album (Strays), and I still didn’t get to see them live.
And I’ve been a fan of Nine Inch Nails all the way back to the first album, some twenty years ago now.
So it was a complete no-brainer that when the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction) tour was announced with UK dates, I was going to be going.
And lo, last night was the night – and amazingly, I got there in plenty of time. (Considering that last time I was going to see them, Ticketmaster never sent the tickets) Hell, I even got to see the support act – a band called Mew, who I wasn’t overly impressed with. Sorry, Lori, they just didn’t do it for me – but bear in mind I said the same thing way back when Muse supported Skunk Anansie, so don’t count on my opinions for much…
Jane’s Addiction, on the other hand, absolutely rocked the place. It was very much a case of “playing the known stuff” – although that’s not a massive challenge when you’ve only released three albums anyway. My only disappointment was that they didn’t play “Hypersonic” from the “Strays” album – but them’s the breaks. They played pretty much everything else they’ve done that was popular and/or well known.
As for NIN themselves, they did even more. Even though Jane’s had been fantastic (and loud!), with a storming lighting set-up, NIN just did the same only more so. Brighter, louder, harder. It was awe-inspiring. Even better, it seemed like almost a retrospective – again, lots of stuff from the first couple of albums, the real crowd-pleasers, with not much from the latest album at all.
Of course, we knew it was going to be something special for the NIN section when they started bringing out extra lights and speaker stacks as well as what had already been on the stage. What we didn’t expect, though, was a guest appearance by Gary Numan for two tracks – he’s been an inspiration to Trent Reznor (the lead of NIN) for years, but it was still pretty stunning to see him live as well.
All told, my enjoyment of the gig was only slightly damaged at the end, when some fuckwit girl called Lisa decided to keel over next to me – she’d been leaning on me for the previous track, and when it came to an end she just fell forwards, not even an attempt to stop herself. Luckily, I was standing right next to the sound-desk enclosure, so was able to yell and get a security guy’s attention, and while he sorted out getting her medical help (and, as it turned out, a wheelchair) I ended up being the main prop for her, with her holding on to the railings of the enclosure. I’ve no idea what she’d taken (it certainly wasn’t a fit, she wasn’t pissed, but her eyeballs were floating off in different directions) but she was like a sack of shit – and roughly as good as one at standing up. All due respect to the O2’s medical and security crews though, they were absolutely fantastic.
It meant I didn’t get to pay the full attention to the final track (an awesome version of “Hurt”) but well, priorities and all that.
Still, it was an absolutely stunning gig – as well as eye-fuckingly bright and brain-throbbingly loud too- and if it is to be (as rumoured) their last tour for a significant time, well it was certainly one hell of a way to go out on a high note…
(Oh, and just to rub it in, it took me less than two hours from leaving the O2 to get back home – I got in at 1am. So suck that Wembley, and your bullshit carparking farce)
Wembley Stadium Parking Revisited
Posted: Thu 9 July, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, D4D™, Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking 1 Comment »Ten days ago (roughly) I was at Wembley Stadium, and at the end of the evening had a total farce of a time getting out of the car parks. The following morning, I sent off a complaint email to both CS Parking and Wembley Stadium’s “customer services” people.
In fairness to CS Parking, I got a response back pretty quickly from the MD of the company – impressive in itself – after which there was a fairly long email ‘conversation’ about what had happened. That all got closed off by last Friday (i.e. a week after the even) and was all fine. I still think the parking situation is
- Shit
- Unmanaged for people leaving Wembley Stadium
- Farcical
but I can at least now understand why it’s shit, unmanaged, and a total Grade One ClusterFuck.
Wembley Stadium’s customer services, on the other hand, have only just come back to me today, and their email is rather more of a “Not our problem, mate. Go complain to someone else” effort…
All event day parking is managed by a contracted 3rd party; City & Suburban Parking in partnership with the local authority Brent Council and the Metropolitan Police.
The official car parks were full, accommodating in excess of 3,000 cars and in addition there were approx 3,000 cars parked in unauthorised car parks and a further 1,000 vehicles collecting from the area after the concert. As a result of the high volume of traffic, there were delays clearing the car parks the main car parks were not clear until 1½ hours after the end of the concert. We do not believe that these delays are acceptable however the local roads are under the control of Brent Council, not Wembley Stadium. We will be reviewing the exit plans with Brent Council and the Metropolitan Police for future concert events.
Thank you once again for contacting us. We hope you will be able to visit Wembley Stadium again in the future.
Considering that I’ve since had comments here on D4D from people who had the same problem with Wembley Stadium’s Parking after the Take That concerts, I think it’s fair to say that you’re actually far better off if you can avoid using the car parking at Wembley Stadium. Well, either that or make use of the “pirate” car parks around the stadium, rather than the Stadium’s piece-of-shit “official” car parking.
Transformers 2
Posted: Thu 2 July, 2009 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »Last night we finally got round to going to see Transformers 2 (sorry, “Revenge of the Fallen”)
We weren’t expecting much from it, having heard lots of negative – or at best ambivalent – reviews of it being too long, too complex, too this, too that. But all fours of us came out deciding that we’d actually enjoyed it far more than we’d expected to.
Yes, it’s utterly ridiculous – just read the questions and answers here to get some idea of the awesome plot holes and stupidity of the film – but so long as you don’t go in expecting anything other than a hyper-fast stupid film with lots of transforming robots, you’ll do OK.
I do wonder if I’m getting old, though – about two thirds of the way through the film, my poor brain was just wanting the director to slow down a bit, just to let the braincells regroup a bit. Sure, you’re just along for the ride really, (and wow, is it a ridiculous ride in *so* many places) and I guess it does need to be that fast just so you don’t sit back and ask just some of the questions in that Q and A post linked to above, but it would still be good to slow things down a tad on occasion.
As expected, the final half-hour or so is just ridiculously bad, with a bundle of tacked-on sentimentality in case you felt you’d missed it.
So it’s fun – but really, please don’t take your brain into the cinema. If you do, you’ll be badly disappointed – and distracted by those epic plot holes.
AC/DC, Wembley Stadium
Posted: Sun 28 June, 2009 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »Other than the aforementioned parking nightmare at Wembley Stadium, the rest of the AC/DC gig on Friday was utterly fantastic. Bearing in mind we were about as far as it’s possible to get from the stage…
The view from our seats
So AC/DC themselves were about 1cm high. There were videoscreens either side, which made the viewing experience something akin to watching on a small TV from across the room, but that’s still OK. After all, it’s the sound you’re going for, not the vision – and the sound was storming. Mind you, some people were obviously expected to be just there for the beer…
Carlsberg trailer behind beer tent at floor level
The two-and-a-quarter hours of AC/DC just rocked the place. Interestingly, they only played about five tracks from the latest album, Black Ice, and the rest came from all over the last thirty-odd years. And all of it was ace. Several firm favourites got played, including Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Back in Black, Hells Bells and (of course) For Those About To Rock as a finale, along with cannon blasts.
It wasn’t a show in the same way as the one Pink did recently, but it was still a show – the lighting was spectacular (and improved through the night, as the sun went down) and everyone seemed to have a fantastic time. Personally I felt the ten-plus minutes of Angus’ guitar soloing was a move too far, and could’ve had a couple more tracks instead. But that’s just me.
The AC/DC lightshow
All told, a seriously good gig – I’d go and see them again no worries.
Knackered
Posted: Sat 27 June, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Reviews(ish), Travel, Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »So, yesterday was the AC/DC “Black Ice Tour” concert at Wembley Stadium – and right now I’m utterly knackered.
I left the house at 2.15 to go and collect the other person (the almost-brother-in-law) I was going with from Dereham before starting off for London at about 3.30 to go thrashing down to Wembley. We got there about 6pm – not too bad, although we could’ve done better if the satnav hadn’t decided to mis-direct us on the North Circular. Still, got there in plenty of time.
Wembley is bloody impressive – and effing huge. We were right up at the top, which meant that the band were about a centimetre high – although the big video screens either side of the stage meant they were much bigger – ooh, almost like watching a video of them live.
Anyway, two hours of standing, watching the gig – which was ace, and for which another post is due to be written (along with manky cameraphone pictures) – before heading home.
And that was where it all went a bit tits-up. You see, Wembley Stadium may be dead easy to get out of, but the car-parks really aren’t. Considering you’ve paid £25 – yes, twenty-fucking-five quid – to CS Parking (also known as City and Suburban parking) in order to park, I’d expect at least a couple of people out there guiding drivers and managing the traffic flow. But no. The parking situation when you’re coming out of Wembley Stadium is a total, complete and utter fuck-up. So we waited for half an hour, then decided to move, and all told it took an hour and a quarter to get out of Wembley Stadium’s car parking.
Once we’d done that, it was plain sailing – straight round the M40, M25, M11 and A11. Easy. I was back in Dereham at 2:45 and home at about 3:15.
But dear God I’m tired today – and my feet fucking hurt, too. There’s a learning experience in that – possibly “lose some weight you fat bastard”. We’ll see.
Terminator Salvation
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »Last night we went to see the new Terminator film, Salvation. And bloody good it is, too. Well, assuming you’ve liked the other Terminator films – and we’ll eliminate T3 from the equation, because that was unutterable shit.
It’s not a continuation from the other films – it’s being called a “reboot”, which I would also say isn’t strictly true. It’s different, in the same kind of way that “Aliens” is completely different to “Alien” – the basics are the same, but also things have changed – as they say in the film, “This isn’t the future I was told about”. Which of course is at least half the fun with films involving time travel in the way the Terminator ones do. (And can you believe it’s 25 years since the original Terminator film?)
The main change in this though is that it doesn’t involve any time travel. Instead, it’s all taking place in the future, with an adult John Connor. They’ve taken the time to look at how the machines would work/evolve, including bringing in a couple of new types of machine which make sense, and look fantastic.
The film’s slightly let down by the last ten minutes or so, which descend into American morality and predictability – but other than that, it’s a pretty stunning ride. Even better, it actually makes sense for the most part – there are fairly large holes in a couple of the concepts, but you’re willing to suspend that for a while, at least.
All told, it’s well worth seeing (again, based on the assumption that Terminator movies are your thing) and makes for an entertaining- and intense – couple of hours. Far better than Wolverine, that’s for sure…
The Shield – Finale
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2009 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve been watching the TV series The Shield since the first episode, and it’s always been stunning. It’s a lot darker than most TV series, and a lot more morally grey, based around the life of a corrupt police squad in a district of LA. The prime character, Vic Mackey, has throughout been juggling gangs and drug dealers with the needs of the police – including robbing the Albanian Mafia of $2m for the needs of his team and their families. You can begin to see what I mean about morally grey…
Anyway, this week was the final episode – it’s been going for seven seasons, and the writers decided to bring it to a proper close, rather than leaving things open to fate and falling viewing statistics.
And it was the right thing to do – the finale was just as stunning as the first episode, with everything being brought to a close. Mackey continued to be a scheming swine, and all the other stories came to a pretty satisfactory close too.
All told, yeah, I’m dead impressed. Might even consider getting the full seven-series box-set (once it’s come down in price a bit, anyway)