A Bit of a Catch Up

Well, well, well, hasn't it been a long time since I was on here again. I know I said that my posts might become a little more infrequent but I genuinely hadn't imagined that months would past without a few scribbles and for that I apologise profusely. So a quick run down on the more memorable events of the past weeks and some music recommendations whilst I'm at it. I will work in reverse chronological order for the sake of my memory more than anything else.

Most recently, yesterday in fact, I stage managed Sub Focus at the Tuesday Club. I'm not normally a fan of the Tuesday Club but they were desperate for crew and my inability to say no meant that my name went down on the job sheet. I am now very glad that I did say yes because it was one of the best nights I have worked so far. The LED wheel they brought with them was a beautiful piece of equipment and looked amazing in a reasonably small venue, there were literally centimetres to spare before it hit the ceiling. I wish I had some photos to show you but sadly they have not made their way onto the internet as yet.

With a bit of luck I will be starting my Genesys project sometime next week. We have been held up so far because of a lack of technical know how in our team and some shoddy coding on the practice task. The students seem to have organised themselves really well and are constantly waiting on the staff to do things which is a real shame. On top of this, it took them several weeks before we knew what we had actually done wrong! How are we supposed to fix it if we don't even know there is something wrong.

Last week was a special Space with guest VJ Beatamaxx and I was the lucky person in charge of making sure his visual delights appeared on every surface imaginable - well, 4 projectors and 2 plasma screens anyway. Later that evening, I sent a tweet about a couple of the visuals during the show and now him and his production guy are following me which is nice. Either they are hoping I will reciprocate or they recognised the photo and were impressed by my wonderful AV skills (probably the first one).

On the music front again, my album of the month (and maybe months) is The Constant by I Blame Coco. She has been my single of the week before and I've now seen her live twice (once when I was operating the lights!). Sadly she hadn't released her album when she came to Sheffield otherwise I'd have been very tempted to by the CD to get it signed. It is a really good album and there are no songs that I don't like but I do have a couple of favourites. Please Rewind, Self Machine, Ceaser and Quicker are all up at the top but I've also caught myself singing In Spirit Golden and It's About to Get Worse - which has been floating around my head for the last couple of days now.

I went to see Marina and the Diamonds - again - a couple of weeks ago but I'd been home for the weekend and forgot to bring my camera. It was quite nice for a change to watch everything through my eyes rather than the lens of the camera though. I did borrow my friends camera for a lot of it though but I tried to cut down on the number of photos I took. I did think that it might be a bit of a waste of time seeing her again but the shows keep getting bigger and better each time. From the humble beginnings as a secondary artist on the NME Radar tour in the Union's very own Fusion up to the Leadmill and now Nottingham Trent Student's Union - who have far better equipment that we do - unless that came as part of her tour that it. Their lighting rig was very impressive and I was a little bit jealous of their lighting technician but I think he/she did a much better job than I would have done so fair is fair. There is a bit of a dilemma when you are teching for an artist that you like because if something doesn't go well then it's your fault. Then again, the rewards when something goes well are unmatched so it's swings and roundabouts.

Supporting Marina was Cocknbullkid who I'd heard of before when she popped up on my Last.fm recommended artists list so I was familiar with a couple of her tunes but had never set about actively listening to her. Seeing her live has changed all that however and like Spark before her, I am now a big fan. This weeks single of the week has to be Cocknbullkid with her self titled single. I have had this on repeat - along with Coco since seeing her live and I hope she gets the recognition she deserves in a year or two. The best thing about this song is that you can legally download it absolutely FREE here.