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St David’s Hall has all the aesthetic appeal of a 1980s municipal swimming complex (“complex late brutalism”, according to Building Design magazine), but it’s where I found myself on the evening of April 29th. In a rare display of relevance, I’d been lazily paging through my Facebook feed in the back yard following a particularly…
Simon said “Do you fancy coming to the Deafheaven gig on March 13th?”. Rather than bothering to look up Deafheaven videos or even the Wikipedia page to find out what sort of band they are, I’ve signed up enthusiastically on the spot. It transpires that Black Metal isn’t really my thing. How to describe this…
Monty Python. I got to see Monty frigging Python perform, live (almost)*. Twice. Where to begin on a story like this?! At the tender young age of about 10 whilst killing time in the Victorian town of Elmore my brother and I availed ourselves of about the only method we had at our disposal to…
On Saturday night Liz & I went to Hammersmith Apollo to see an appearance by the currently touring film director, actor, comic book enthusiast and self-professed enthusiast of the sound of his own voice – Kevin Smith. What was particularly appealing about this rare appearance was the accompaniment of long-time collaborator, friend and co-star, Jason…
We’re back up in Edinburgh this year for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – this time Marty’s over from Australia, and he’s joined Liz, Billy, Myk, Kat & I in a nice centrally-placed apartment for a week of theatrical excess and mayhem. So far we’ve seen (I suspect I’ll edit this list a few times in…
Just quickly, New York proved its awesomeness the other night by turning up an opportunity to go see improvisational maestro Bobby McFerrin play a gig at the Highline Ballroom as part of the Blue Note Jazz Festival with a band he described as one of his personal favourites, The Yellowjackets. Bit of an unusual gig –…
60 comedians in 60 minutes sounds like a potentially ridiculous format for a gig, and if you thought that you’d be absolutely right. However somebody cooked the concept up, and there’s clearly plenty of talent keen to get involved because when I went to Comedy Rush at the Shaftesbury Theatre it was the second night…
Weird Al Yankovic is a comedy legend. He released his first parody song in 1976, and has been steadily at it ever since. Far from being mainstream, people claim not to know who he is and yet all seem to know a handful of his breakthrough songs. And whilst touring nearly consistently as well, he…
One of the most vibrant and fun fixtures on the UK calendar is the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe experience, and this year I was once again lucky enough to have the opportunity to go up there land in my lap. Certainly a massive aspect of its appeal is the similarity the atmosphere bears to the…
Getting out to London’s former Millennium Dome – now ambiguously named “The O2”, like a selection of other venues around the continent – is always an exercise carried out with a sense of wistful resignation. You know there’s nothing empirically good to do out there, and there’s the vague likelihood that it’ll be unecessarily difficult…