Sebastian Early Payne

Through Christian’s blog, I found this rather fantastic cover of Creep (from Pablo Honey) by Radiohead, performed by Weezer and a few other people. I can spot acoustic guitars, a violin, a cello, an acoustic bass, a mandolin and various forms of percussion with at least 30 people joining in this communal performance.

Creep is a particular favourite of mine - it was the first Radiohead song I actually liked and thanks to my friend Toby, I have discovered the joys of the modern-day experimentalists and own all their albums. I want you to notice, when I’m not around. I could guess than the vast majority of people I know or those reading this will have experienced this feeling or thought once in their lifetime. And this also marks another return to blogging, hello world!

As my friends have seen, I have never stopped ranting and raving about this new guitar - the Fender American Precision Electric Bass with S1 switching is now mine, after doing a direct swap for my Jazz. The style, shape and body of the Precision seem to suit me much better than the Jazz ever did.I have yet to try it through my Ashdown Engineering combo amp but after exams, I’ll be pumping out some great bass moves - that’s the idea. If anyone has a good suggestion for an ironic, tasteful or even relevevant name then be sure to let me know.

The Bruce Springsteen ticket is still with me so I will try the various Springsteen forums. I want to avoid eBay as much as possible as the seem to be many scalpers around who are looking for poor saps to take advantage of. The lack of entries has not been empathy but simply exams. Some more interesting things (less pictures, more words) will come when work is flowing less.

I bought a ticket to see Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band at Manchester but discovered it was a day before my last three-hour-epic exam that is very important to pass this year. I’m going to see Mark Knopfler - whether this is good or not - before an exam but I couldn’t do this, especially with the amount of traveling involved.

After a tip off from a friend, I got a ticket to see him at Arsenal on 30th May instead, so I have a ticket spare. Shame the Manchester tickets are much better than the Arsenal ones. If anyone is interested in a ticket for Wednesday 28th May at Manchester Old Trafford Stadium at 7:30pm, send me a message! I’ll try eBay and the various ticket swapping sites soon.

11th May 2008 marks a year since I travelled to London to see Roger Waters at Earl’s Court. Earl’s Court doesn’t seem to get the musical attention of the O2 Arena these days. In my humble opinion, the O2 is more comfortable, has better viewing angles but is not as central as Earls’ Court is. Roger is playing the UK again but the O2 this time around - proof in point. Switching back to 2007, I was heading up to my A-level exams and had booked this well in advance with high hopes for a show. Having see Jet, The Feeling and Bob Dylan within the past six months, I was looking forward to my first big show. When people ask whom my favourite band are, I give two answers. One is my current favourite and then the overall one. The current one at the moment is MGMT or The Raconteurs whereas the overall is always Pink Floyd, very English music about very English things. Seeing Roger Waters (original member and bassist of the band) was the best chance I’d ever have of seeing the music live. I missed David Gilmour’s On An Island tour - hopefully he will tour again some day and I will be sure not to miss it!

The concert sticks in my mind as just fantastic. Unlike Bob Dylan (whom I saw just a few weeks previously), it was a proper show with excellent music (loud!), banter with the audience, pyrotechnics, flying pigs and topical films for each song. Being Roger Waters, it wouldn’t be a show without some political statements. Being a ‘newbie’ to concerts, I wasted time taking photos, without the knowledge that it’s better to go for videos for best memories. I did manage to snap this shot from the song ‘Leaving Beirut’. Controversial I think you may say.

Roger played the same playlist with any variation but this suited me fine. An eclectic mix of a few solo songs, a sample from every period of Floyd’s history and of course - Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety. I loved the record before but my appreciation has increased even more since watching the whole thing. It’s not an album you can dip in and out of. To appreciate it as a work of art, you need to listen to the whole thing as a story. It’s timeless and sounds (to me) excellent and relevant today. The instruments of On The Run and Any Colour You Like were songs that were really brought alive in concert compared the album versions. The epic opening to Time simply builds up the audience until the song kicks in and everyone went wild. The encore of Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2 and Comfortably Numb were a great roundup to the show. David Gilmour’s guitar work and vocals were sorely missed the most on Comfortably Numb and Money. Roger’s guitarists did a very good job but it was missing something. I’m unsure if having multiple guitarists for a epic solo works.

All in all, I’ve got great memories and will hopefully see Roger, David GIlmour or even Pink Floyd again some day. I’ve seen Roger on his ‘Dark Side Of The Moon Live’ tour and would only see him again if he does something different - The Wall maybe or Wish You Were Here? Speculation continues to rise about a reunited Pink Floyd and if Gilmour can brought around, I will be one of the first in line for tickets.

Since I arrived back at Durham, I took a few rolls of film with my Lomo LC-A that I picked up in London but when I unloaded the last film, I checked the shutter and noticed it was jamming when taking sample frames! The realisation that the whole roll of film was probably black suddenly came to m.! I have dropped the camera several times (on hard, unforgiving surfaces) d black tape. My LC-A was made in 1996 and has probably had quite a few beatings ’round the Soviet bloc before it entering into my posession. The people at Sendean Cameras have been great but this isn’t their fault and I suspect that if I want to be a Lomographer, I’ll need to buy a new LC-A+ for something that’ll take some bashing and be consistent in working. Final advice to anyone listening - Don’t buy old things and expect them to take a beating and work for a while