Poor Excuse for Laziness

If you're wondering why my posts have become somewhat sporadic... it's the credit crunch / world financial meltdown / toxic debts / etc. Or maybe laziness. Or X-Factor. But it's probably the crunch. Everything's the crunch.

100 Kazoos

Hope&Social's Blues Bar gig ended somewhat inspiredly/erratically (delete according to personal preference) yesterday afternoon when they handed out 100 kazoos to the audience to replace the brass on the final song (whose title I have temporarily misplaced). This might have worked well except that the kazoos were quite cheap and not too easy to play until you got the hang of it. I was brilliant at kazooing but the rest of the audience seemed to have some problems. The band said they were going to record the song but if they did I'm not sure it will go down as one of the best live audience performances ever made. Not even the best one they've made.

It was fun though.

I was in the little boys room when I heard them announce in the main room that they were handing out the kazoos. I therefore had to finish my business very quickly in order to head back and grab an instrument. It was worth the rush.

And I made sure to wash my hands first, in case you were worried.

H&S Weekend

York has a brand spanking new music venue, The Duchess. It's in the building that used to be The Stonebow Snooker Club. Now it's a venue. We went on Friday night for the first time, to see the essential Hope&Social. It felt like being in another city! It's big, looks good, sounds good and has decent beer. I'll certainly be going back regularly.

And in the meantime we're off to the teeny tiny Harrogate Blues Bar this afternoon for a second bout of H&S.

Serious Merger Implications

In the news today, it looks like HBOS and Lloyds could be merging. This would create a big bank but I've realised that it could have quite serious repercussions in York. Outside M&S at the top of Stonebow, a merger of the two branches would actually block the road, impeding access to The Duchess and Fibbers. Here's an artists impression of what the merged bank might look like:



I'm glad I've had the opportunity to get this problem out in the open. The BBC seem to not be mentioning it. Censoring, fascist scum.

It starts...

Well, it's about bloomin' time. But good news nonetheless. Harmonix have finally put out the long-awaited patch for (PS3) Rock Band that lets it use the Guitar Hero 3 guitar. And it works perfectly! Finally we can have two-guitar Rock Band (or even full 4 player if I had any friends!). Haven't actually tried it properly yet mind other than a quick test to see if it worked.

Now all I need is a GH3 patch to use the RB guitar. I'm sure it's on the way. Maybe.

And one thing's for sure, I'm not buying a second drum kit so they'd better bloody make sure the RB drums work with GHWT.

A music book I won't be buying

Looking in the window of Banks's Music Shop today I spotted a book of guitar tab. It wasn't Travis or the Foo Fighters. It was something else, something wronger. It was a book of music from Guitar Hero. It lets you play all the songs you've learnt to play on your fake plastic guitar on a real guitar instead of a fake plastic guitar.

Now, maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't the whole f***ing point of guitar hero that you do it on a fake plastic guitar rather than a real guitar? It helps you avoid the world of broken strings and lost plectri. Computer games are not an introduction to the real world. When I was a kid I spent hours (minutes) playing Advanced Lawnmower Simulator on my Spectrum. It was great because it let me have all the excitement of mowing an actual lawn with an actual petrol lawnmower but without having to leave my bedroom. It didn't in any way inspire me to go out and get my own petrol lawnmower. And I never saw garden centers selling ALS branded lawnmower instruction books in them. And believe me, I visited a lot of garden centers when I was a kid. Apologies if it's garden centre by the way.

So my point broadly is that the Guitar Hero tab book is daft and stupid and you should boycott it lest this stupidity escalate.

And I'm not planning to buy "The Yie Ar Kung Fu Guide to Martial Arts" or "Leisure Suit Larry Teaches Humping" either.

Chocolate Post

Do you ever post chocolate bars to yourself in your work's internal post because it's nice to receive chocolate bars in the internal post? I don't. But I considered it.

Portal Music

I'm as normal playing catch-up in the world of computer games, still pretty much being caused by my semi-obsession with finishing all the Final Fantasy games. But at the weekend I found the time to play through the wonderful Portal. Everything I'd read about it was true - it was funny, clever, fun and completely innovative. It was also refreshingly short. Hard to say much about the best bits of it without spoiling the game for those who haven't played it. But I will say that the end-credits have provided me with an amazing ringtone.

Possibly even a geekier ringtone than the Blakes 7 theme I was using before.