Oh how I wish I would have gone to see Joshua Radin do a solo gig at The Monto Water Rats as well. Thank god for YouTube and everyone having a digital camera. :D Here’s Joshua singing Winter on the 6th of July.
And here’s Tori doing her Winter at our gig in the Hammersmith Apollo on the 4th. It was magical.
I’m so in love with my new gold shoes. <3 They're like the third pair that I've gotten 'for the wedding'. Erm... But I do think these ones are it! They're just like in Dirty Dancing aren't they! Now we'll just have to start practising the dance I think. I shall include an example below for Stu to have nightmares about. :P
I can’t believe the wedding is next week. Yikes. I’m sure there must be something huge and fundamentally important that I’ve forgotten to do. Hmm. I did order my bouquet today, that’s something right. Oh and I started compiling a playlist for the reception as well, I currently have about 13 hours of music on it and need to cut it down to about 8. Quite daunting. Oh well, can’t worry about that sort of stuff now, I’ve got my gold shoes on. :D
Also, as promised, I updated the wedding blog with a little write-up about the Hen Night happenings. We did have a wicked time! :D
I’m not sure it’s possible to put last nights experience into words. I don’t think I know eloquent enough words not to turn something so magical into… less so. I’ve been told a lot of times that to really appreciate Antony and the Johnsons, you have to see them live. Well now I have. And it was almost a life-altering experience. Of course, if I was to say to you now that to really appreciate them, go see them live, those will be just words… until you do. It’s absolutely impossible to tell you what it’s like, you have to experience it yourself.
When I started listening to Antony it took me some time to ‘get used to’ his voice. Now I know exactly why that was. His voice is something so pure, so full, so three-dimensional, that it is impossible to capture the full miracle of it in a recording. It needs to be free for you to feel every nuance, for you to truly appreciate what a gift this man has.
The concert hall was sold out, packed to the rafters. It was boiling hot. I’m sure the people standing in the middle of the floor squashed by others were even more uncomfortable than us sitting in the back row. And yet, everyone, each and every person, was enraptured, hanging on to every note. I’ve never experienced such an atmosphere in a concert where the whole audience practically holds their breath, staying quiet as can be, because they don’t want to miss any tiny note from this man’s lips.
The whole time I was sitting there I was thinking what a miracle music is, the fact that there are people who are able to create such beauty is both humbling and mind-blowing – what an unbelievable gift we have as a human race. His voice was more than just another instrument; it was like a complete separate presence, it emoted so much, revealed secrets, connected with something primal and something sacred.
I especially enjoyed Shake That Dog, You Are My Sister, Twilight, Bird Gehrl and Hope There’s Someone. And of course the amusing, yet hauntingly beautiful cover of Beyoncé’s Crazy In Love. For some reason I found it hard to relax into his rendition of Cripple and the Starfish though. I think the recorded version of that song is embedded somewhere so deep in me that it was impossible to fully let go of that and enjoy the arrangement. Having said that, the whole experience just from an emotional point of view, on a scale of 1 to 10, was about 645. Even Stu, who was pretty much dragged there against his will, said that he was completely blown away.
Here’s a video of the Beyoncé cover from two days before in Sweden. I’m so happy our venue was much more intimate. The atmosphere seems completely different in such a big outside venue.
Hehe. Quite brilliant. :P
Sooo what’s up? I’m dog tired but I figured I oughta write something now or I never will. :P I don’t know where all my time goes. Do I sound like a broken record much?
I went to see Maija Vilkkumaa in concert last night and wrote a little review about it (in finnish) on last.fm, which you can find here.
I was clever enough not to charge the battery of my camera beforehand, so obviously it ran out of battery pretty promptly. I did manage to snap a few pics, and as if by miracle the camera allowed me to shoot a tiny bit of video at the end of the gig before turning itself off for good.
In other news, I’ve made some progress on the wedding invites. Although I did run into trouble in the crucial cut & glue phase (this was never my strong point), so I’m taking them back to England next week for Susanna to finish them off. And yeah, I will write something in the wedding blog soon. Honestly! :D
I suppose, apart from the wedding stuff, the biggest development in our life at the moment is the fact that we decided to postpone our US road trip until next year, and instead move back to the UK by the end of this year. It’s pretty damn sweet to feel like we have finally made a firm decision after all these years of umming and ahhing. However, I won’t allow myself to think about the nightmare that is the logistics of it all yet… :| Let’s do the wedding stress first eh.
Hmm. I think I should get some sleep. Maybe.
This drive might look a bit familiar. :D Now with added snow.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ahEO-aQwQ]
I shot a lot of really short clips so I could delete some if I ran out of space on my card, hence the final product is a bit more jerky than I’d like. Oh well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN1SEJxquHM]
It’s been snowing all day today. I doubt it’s going to stay on the ground though as it’s now turned into rain and the temperature is +1C. Snow always delivers that transitional ‘shock’ into the winter which sucks, but on the other hand, it’s kinda nice. It felt a lot lighter today.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2lLjPqj8V8]
Don’t feel like writing (or talking) at the moment. I will soon though.
Here’s a video about last week.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xxI9Kx8-U]
Most of you will find this boring. It’s more of a ‘living memory’ for myself. For the patient ones who’ll watch all of it there’s a little reward of hearing my awful in-car-singing for a couple of seconds. :P
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkuxoJtW_8s]
So maybe I lied about the not doing more videoblogging. :P Well I didn’t really lie… I wasn’t going to do more. But there’s something about it that fascinates me. Maybe it’s the challenge? I’ve always been a crap public speaker/performer and maybe this sort of continued humiliation will do me good. :D Perfcet logic!
I went to the dentist yesterday… actually, he was called a ‘tooth surgeon’. :| Should have known from the start that wasn’t a good thing. It was supposed to be just a consultation but it ended with him pulling my tooth out. Seriously. :O I was rather shocked/terrified/traumatised. I slept a few hours last night but then woke up and couldn’t stay in bed as being still makes me feel the pain more. So, from since about 3am until 6am I’ve been editing this video. It’s not as easy as it seems!
Anyways, here’s hoping this is slightly less embarrasing than the last one…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfKtTDDAo40]
Here’s something cringeworthy for you. Because of some insane brainfart I decided that making a little video would be a good idea instead of ranting via text. I didn’t realise just how painful it would turn out to be! :D I don’t know why I can’t speak like a normal person and why I have to fight really hard not to revert to baby talk. Especially the word ‘washing machine’ is impossible to say in a non-babyish manner. Sorry about that. :P
So, all together now…. criiiiinge!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c7S5KHqlJk]
Update: Now with a soundtrack. :D (Ta Sooz. :P)
