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Gig, Magic, Jasmine, Drones
Saturday night saw me standing in the rain outside the O2 Kentish Town with established gig buddy, Juliet, waiting to see The Rasmus for my seventh or eighth time in fifteen years. I still remember exactly when and where I was when I discovered The Rasmus. It was 2003, I was living in my grandparents' house in Oxford and I was off work sick for the first time ever. I lay on the sofa in my living room and watched MTV all day - and the video for In The Shadows was playing over and over again. I was hooked and I've been an unashamed fan of Finnish emo rock music ever since. The Rasmus gigs I've been to have been a bit mixed over the years - not due to any issues with their performances, but more to do with venue and sound mixing. Saturday night was a special gig because they were due to sing their most famous album, Dead Letters, which features In The Shadows. And it was awesome. The lead singer, Lauri, is looking better than ever at 40 - I do not know where he gets his energy from, but I'd like some of it please!
Dead Letters is still excellent, and has one of my favourite songs on it - Funeral Song - which isn't often part of their live set. Then we got a fantastic acoustic section, which included No Fear, a song that I wouldn't have expected to work acoustically, but it was great. Last year, at Koko, Juliet and I rocked out on the balcony and thoroughly enjoyed singing Livin' In A World Without You at each other. I said at the start of Saturday's gig that we wouldn't get that this time around, because it was on Black Roses - but then they played it as the last gong before the encore!!
We had a fantastic view, right behind the sound box, thanks to Juliet being an O2 customer, allowing us priority entry. So, an awesome night all round!
Yesterday, I finished Shadowplay by Laura Lam, the second in the Micah Gray trilogy. I read the first one on reading retreat a couple of years ago, but didn't really remember the events very clearly. So, I was glad of a bit of recap at the start of book two, even though I normally find that really annoying. The protagonist runs away from an oppressive upper class family to join the circus and then has to flee again after some problems with the ringmaster. Book two sees Micah holed up in a disused theatre with fellow fugitive Drystan. I like the world and I like the characters, but it did feel as though not much actually happened in this instalment. Plus, the mysterious revelations about the ancient history of the world were a bit complicated, so I had trouble following the significance of Micah's sort-of dreams/visions and the meaning of the leftover technology. So, while it was reasonably entertaining overall, I'm not invested enough to want to see the trilogy through to its conclusion. I did like the growing relationship between Micah and Drystan, though - always nice to see diversity in romance subplots.
The main event of yesterday, though was Bombay Rose, an animated Indian film about a young woman trying to keep her family together on the streets of Bombay. It wove fantasy and history together with a sometimes brutal present, to portray various people's struggles. My favourite bit was when the elderly English teacher was getting herself ready for a date and saw a younger version of herself in the mirror. Despite the older sister being ostensibly the protagonist, it was actually the younger sister who drove most of the action and brought about all the good things that led to the conclusion of the story. It was her compassion for those less fortunate than herself and her desire for those she cared about to be happy that resulted in her family's eventual good fortune, which was nice. The film was quite slow and a bit dreamlike, and some aspects were more oblique than completely clear, but it was very layered and more interesting than I had expected.
Then, this morning I watched Silent Running, which is a sci-fi film from 1972, telling the story of the Earth's last forests, preserved in domes on board space freighters, and what one of the astronauts is prepared to do to save them when their destruction is ordered by those back on Earth. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this film, but those will eventually be revealed in an episode of our podcast, so I'm not going to detail them here.
Dead Letters is still excellent, and has one of my favourite songs on it - Funeral Song - which isn't often part of their live set. Then we got a fantastic acoustic section, which included No Fear, a song that I wouldn't have expected to work acoustically, but it was great. Last year, at Koko, Juliet and I rocked out on the balcony and thoroughly enjoyed singing Livin' In A World Without You at each other. I said at the start of Saturday's gig that we wouldn't get that this time around, because it was on Black Roses - but then they played it as the last gong before the encore!!
We had a fantastic view, right behind the sound box, thanks to Juliet being an O2 customer, allowing us priority entry. So, an awesome night all round!
Yesterday, I finished Shadowplay by Laura Lam, the second in the Micah Gray trilogy. I read the first one on reading retreat a couple of years ago, but didn't really remember the events very clearly. So, I was glad of a bit of recap at the start of book two, even though I normally find that really annoying. The protagonist runs away from an oppressive upper class family to join the circus and then has to flee again after some problems with the ringmaster. Book two sees Micah holed up in a disused theatre with fellow fugitive Drystan. I like the world and I like the characters, but it did feel as though not much actually happened in this instalment. Plus, the mysterious revelations about the ancient history of the world were a bit complicated, so I had trouble following the significance of Micah's sort-of dreams/visions and the meaning of the leftover technology. So, while it was reasonably entertaining overall, I'm not invested enough to want to see the trilogy through to its conclusion. I did like the growing relationship between Micah and Drystan, though - always nice to see diversity in romance subplots.
The main event of yesterday, though was Bombay Rose, an animated Indian film about a young woman trying to keep her family together on the streets of Bombay. It wove fantasy and history together with a sometimes brutal present, to portray various people's struggles. My favourite bit was when the elderly English teacher was getting herself ready for a date and saw a younger version of herself in the mirror. Despite the older sister being ostensibly the protagonist, it was actually the younger sister who drove most of the action and brought about all the good things that led to the conclusion of the story. It was her compassion for those less fortunate than herself and her desire for those she cared about to be happy that resulted in her family's eventual good fortune, which was nice. The film was quite slow and a bit dreamlike, and some aspects were more oblique than completely clear, but it was very layered and more interesting than I had expected.
Then, this morning I watched Silent Running, which is a sci-fi film from 1972, telling the story of the Earth's last forests, preserved in domes on board space freighters, and what one of the astronauts is prepared to do to save them when their destruction is ordered by those back on Earth. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this film, but those will eventually be revealed in an episode of our podcast, so I'm not going to detail them here.