Jaz Design

I’ve had a very musical week. An amazing week.

Last Sunday we headed over to Reading Festival to watch the one and only Radiohead perform. I had no idea what to expect, and was blown away. The other bands were good too, but I’d be lying if I said I’d gone to see them. I was there purely for Radiohead, and some festival fun.

I have to say, hearing that many people sing along to Karma Police, it sends chills down your spine – it really does. I’ve never quite got over that part of the gig experience, people singing along – all those people on the same page. There’s nothing like it.

It was great to just chill out to their interesting and extraordinary music. We had a wonderful time. You can catch the highlights on the BBC website here.

Then we had Muse. Muse and their homecoming gigs in Teignmouth, Devon. (163 miles away…) Somehow, somehow we ended up with tickets for both the gigs. Friday we headed down, checked into our hotel, headed back out to the first gig. Exhausted though I was from the epic driving, it was fantastic. The Den is a small venue, so no matter where you were the view was good.

Saturday, just as awesome. We spent the day exploring Teignmouth town , down on the beach, and eating cream teas… and donut men.

Probably my favourite song from the gigs was Cave. It wasn’t just Cave. It was a “jazz rendition”. The piano was spectacular.  The whole thing was spectacular. See the vid here!

My other favourite is the song which I guess has replaced Butterflies (similar in their epicness) on their live setlist, United States of Eurasia. I’d have been a bit upset if we’d only gone on the Saturday when Matt messed up the Chopin at the end and didn’t finish it

Favourite new song? Easy. Undisclosed Desires.

See my flickr for more pics!

Last night was Muse at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust gig. It was pretty darn special.

I didn’t think much of the support (the Futureheads), just sounded like really loud guitars playing chord after chord but that might just be because I don’t know their music. They did alright – better than the Noisettes at Wembley Arena anyway.

So what was so special? There’s a reason Muse have been labelled the best live act around at the minute and that’s because they are the epitome of awesome on stage. They did all the usual songs (Feeling Good, Supermassive Black Hole, Time is Running Out etc) but also played Fury (which I’ve never seen live) and Megalomania on the (excuse me) big fuck off organ. Second largest in the UK according to wiki. A lot of Muse fans are pretty excited about that, with good reason. It was immense. Matt on that thing reminded me of the Phantom of the Opera a little, he just has that haunting quality.

Of course I was more than happy once they played Butterflies and Hurricanes, which had a bit of a different twist to the piano, and was as usual, spellbinding. I can’t help it. I love that song.

There was also a lot of other random riffs and little short pieces and things and Matt for some reason burrowing under his guitar… and the massive Bliss balloons, one of which Matt burst with his guitar at the end of the song.

Anyway, I started a YouTube account for the rubbish videos I made with my phone, the audio’s ok though. My yootoob. Includes Megalomania on the organ and Butterflies and Hurricanes.

Picture by olly_og @ flickr

… is that the Mister and I managed to get tickets to see Muse at the Royal Albert Hall in April. The gig is for the Teenage Cancer Trust, and if past experience is anything to go by, it will be amazing. I’ve seen them at Wembley Arena, and Wembley Stadium, so this’ll be a different experience as it’s a significantly smaller venue. I’m excited. We’re 2 in 5000 peeps who get to go. How awesome.

Also I put up the rest of the Bleeding Rose pics. You can see them here or here. I don’t change the prices they put in on the prints, so if you want one let me know and I’ll sort them out to be more reasonable.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if, one summer’s day, when there was gridlock on the M25 and countless people were sitting with their windows down, waiting for the traffic to move, if, someone put a song on that everyone knew the words too, some kind of cult legend, like Bohemian Rhapsody, loudly, and started this chain of singing that moved through the traffic like wildfire. I think that would be awesome.

That’s what I thought when I was in traffic on the M1 yesterday anyway, singing along with Freddy Mercury.

April 2nd

Sugar Puffs
Sandwich – houmous and celery
Jelly bugs
Chocolate eggs
Half a box of chocolates
Roasted carrot, parsnips, garlic potatoes and broccoli with a Quorn mushroom and garlic escallop thing.
A few glasses of peach schnapps and lemonade

Yesterday the other half an I went to see 300. He likes Miller and knows about these things, whereas I have no clue about things like graphic novels and was mostly going because I liked the trailer, and I’ve dragged him to every shitty horror flick that’s come out since October. I was surprised, I thought the film was amazing.

It was certainly visually stunning, although I’m not so sure I’d have been so accepting of the obviousness of CG had I not known it was based on a graphic novel. Either way, they really went to town on it. I especially loved this technique that I’ve only just started noticing appearing in movies, where, for example, someone shoots an arrow, the camera pans in on the arrow, time slows down and it moves around the arrow before it speeds up again, drawing you in and making you feel a part of something otherwise quite flat. It’s almost 3D without being 3D.

Gerard Butler was impressive, I’ve only seen him as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, it was very entertaining to see him do something so different, and do it so well.

The story wasn’t that strong, it was mostly about the fighting which is fair enough, but they did manage to put enough of a storyline in to have me crying by the end of it (I felt like I’d been hit with an emotional bus, but I think that may have just been me). There were some very touching moments, some downright scary moments, but mostly, a lot of bloody moments. But even then, they were well engineered bloody moments.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack, the soundtrack, I adored it. Rocky vs classical, always a winner with me. I thought it fit the movie very well. I’d recommend the movie, assuming you can deal with slow motion decapitation… or just generally a lot of slow motion. I read somewhere they filmed most of it at 50-150 frames per second – shows just how much slow motion they did or planned to use!

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I realise now on DA you get a free prints account, so I just messed around with the options to see what would happen, as a result, this photo of the sunset over Southsea is available as a print.

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All else is going alright. Got a lot of work on at uni, but it’s all good things. Thinking of things to write about for a dissertation, working up a design for a competition, running a business focussed on environmentalism (proper website and details available next week), it’s all good.

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Thursday 21st March

Nothing!

Wednesday 20th March

Chocolate chips 0.49
Pizza 1.15
Broccoli 0.46
Butter 0.46
Chips 0.88
Enterprise Investment 30
Car Insurance 476.04 (not including this in percentages as it tips it too much, just included for records)

Totals so far…
£235.35
Necessary £179.96 76.46%
Unnecessary £55.39 23.54%

Glandular fever (mono, ‘tever). Well. Whodathunkit. Worst timing ever to get this. Well, I suppose there’s never really a good time to get something like this.

It’s still not 100% confirmed. I have to have another blood test, but from the results of the last one, it looks like I have it. And also the fact that the antibiotics aren’t touching the tonsillitis – because that’s actually gotten worse over the last few days.

I’ve been ill two weeks now. Two weeks. I’ve missed two deadlines, I managed to make one other one but I’m not too happy about what I handed in. This was supposed to be our two weeks off to do things like visit Johnathan Creek’s windmill, but nooo. I can’t drive. Bah. There was so much else I wanted to do too, and I’ve already lost a week and still have that work to do when I feel well enough. I’m also bored of being stuck indoors – since last Tuesday the only places I’ve been are the doctors and the Co-Op (for Mars eggs, yeah, chocolate, so kill me) – and I’m used to galavanting many many miles cross country for uni, boyfriendness and various things, but, stuck here. Bah.

On the plus, I’ve been spoilt by my mother and my boyfriend and even J came to see me I have *flowers*. They so pretty Props go to those people for putting up with me being all ill and stuff. I can’t imagine it’s much fun for them either.

I’ve been listening to old Placebo music while I’ve been dozing, some of which I’d not listened to before – and I’m endlessly fascinated by how all their songs rhyme. What’s up with that?

Also, happy Imbolc.

Update: Now available on DA, although still not happy with the photo.

Some of you know I was painting, and painting I did. The piece is finished, however, the photo I have of it, it was still wet, and the painting is now down at my boyfriend’s in Portsmouth. So, until I’m next round there to take a decent photo to put on DeviantArt, you’ll just have to cope with the sneak preview in my photobucket here. The lighting of the photo is also rubbish, so basically, it looks an awful lot better than that.

Click to fullview

DeviantArt Description – This is Matt Bellamy (aka Tiny Man) of Muse, at the opening of some concert in Las Vegas. Or at least that’s the reference I used for it. There are differences however, just not many. Reference is here

I went to see Muse a few weeks ago with someone quite lufly. The concert was amazing, and I missed art, and felt like doing something creative with the experience. They opened the concert with Take a Bow, and in this amazing moment when the singing stopped and the music took off, Matt stepped up, kissed his fist and thrust it in the air. Everyone went wild, it was amazing. And that was the entire basis for this painting. You can see a not great quality vid of the opening here

Acryllic on card – roughly A2 size. Maybe, 20 hours? On the painting, the sketch took about 2/3 I should imagine.

I gave it away the same day I finished it, now hung proudly on the lufly person’s wall.

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As an aside, we have tickets to see Muse at Wembley Stadium – woooooooooooooo.

The compilation album thus far:

1. I Know a Song that’ll get on your Bananaphone
2. I Bananaphone
3. A Little Bananaphone
4. Take a Bananaphone

These past two weeks I’ve had to get up stupidly early on a Saturday. I don’t have a Saturday job anymore, therefore I resent it. Today was for a boring mundane reason, but I did end up working from 8am until about half 8 tonight on one of my projects, and yet, I still feel I should have done more

I did stop, and, I got my paint out. *PAINT* I have it on my face, it’s quite exciting. I think I thoroughly ruined the outlining I did for this piece, but I don’t care. I enjoyed myself. I had to voluntarily stop though because I am so god damned tired. Plus it will end up being awesome I’m sure, I just haven’t painted in about 18 months :/

Also, I wasn’t aware Jared Leto could sing. And now I am. I’ve been listening to 30 Seconds to Mars pretty much all day. I really like their music. It reminds me of things like Nickleback I guess. Which I also liked. It went with the mood anyway, and that’s why I like music, moods.

Yesterday was Muesday. Yesterday was awesome.

(See also this post)

I’ve never been to a gig before. I am evidently very deprived. We went to Wembley, to see Muse. Hence, Muesday.

The crowd was rather boisterous, so whilst we were near the front for the first song we did move back a bit so as not to die or something.

It was amazing.

The set list (found here) was as follows:

Take a Bow – amazing intro, people got quite into the “you’ll burn in hell” part. I was a bit distracted by all the being thrown from side to side and what not, but it was still awesome.
Video@myspace Shortvid@youtube Vid@youtube Bestvidthusfar@youtube
Hysteria
Vid@youtube
New Born - I was dying to see this. I love the piano bits in their songs. Thus, the intro to this song, is amazing, and it was even more amazing seeing it live.
Video@youtubeland Video2@youtubeland
Butterflies and Hurricanes – This is my favourite Muse song. Ever. Therefore, them playing it, well. It. Was. Amazing. Just how Matt plays piano like that is beyond me.
Vid@youtube Pianosolovid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Assassin Vid@youtube
Map of the Problematique Vid@youtube
Plug in Baby – Shiny. Shiny. Shiny.
Vid@youtube
Soldier’s Poem – This was pretty special. Matt told peeps to get their mobiles/lighters out. I think Wembley holds something like 12,500 people, so looking back over the crowds was stunning.
Vid@youtube
Invincible – The whole arms in the air thing. The music. I loved it. Probably one of the best songs they performed, although that said it is really really hard to choose.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Supermassive Black Hole – This song gives me a buzz, live, was just. I hate to keep using the words amazing and awesome. But that’s really what it was.
Video@youtubeland Vid2@youtube
Forced In
Time is Running Out – One of the things I really liked is how they did different intros, outros and stuff. Half the time you didn’t know what they were about to play because it didn’t quite sound how you expected. This was one of those. I was glad they played it, I remember years ago when it first came out, it felt nice and nostalgic.
Starlight – I loved this. The clapping. The everything. I really love the lyrics to this.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube
Stockholm Syndrome – My favourite parts were the “this is the last time…” bits, everyone got all arms in the air-y.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube Vid3@youtube
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Citizen Erased
Vid@youtube
Bliss (with balloons) – Balloons. Balloons are awesome. Although they were the wrong side of the arena for us really. Bliss is also an excellent song, and this was all very excellent.
VidofBallooooooons@youtube
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Hoodoo – Shiny piano. Lots of it.
Vid@youtube
Knights of Cydonia – Great finale. The on screen type was a bit cheesy, but that’s ok. My arms almost died at this point. I still can’t really move them very well.
Vid@youtube Vid2@youtube Vid3@youtube

I checked out flickr, as you do, and thus far there are two people with sets of photos from last night – you can check those out here and here.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I want to see them again. Right now. I loved the set list too. Especially as they played Butterflies. That made my week.

Will probably update this shortly.