Sorry For the Interruption...

Normal Service will resume Thursday 3rd May.

The Tale of 30 Seconds of 30 Seconds to Mars

Me and the Colin had a gig on Friday night, one that we have been looking forward to for a while because we both enjoy the band's music. The band is 30 Seconds to Mars, a alternative rock band that has kinda got lost in the wave of Emo shite that is appearing everywhere with the kids wearing those mental (and rather cool looking) hair cuts. We arrived at 7.50pm or so (the times are important) and headed to the bar to gather some pints. We met Shayan and Evander who had bought tickets separately, but we knew were going to be there.

8.05pm - We Are the Physics
A small Scottish band from Glasgow came on next, and they were brilliant. Probably the best support act I have ever seen, which is something, cause i saw Idlewild support Coldplay and Electric Six supporting Queens of the Stone Age supporting Foo Fighters supporting Red Hot Chili Peppers. Wait, that was a pretty good gig... They were very funny, quirky and looked the part on stage. The music was loud, fast and catchy, and it was nice.

8.40pm - We Are the Physics Leave the stage

9.15pm 30 Seconds to Mars
30 Seconds to Mars started out cliched with a long wait for a large curtain to drop, with atmospheric music being played over the system but really it should have been more tongue in cheek. Once the curtain was dropped they burst into the title track from the debut album. Instantly I notice that the lead singer (Jared Leto, of Fight Club fame) is prancing around the stage, despite not having his microphone with him. He is not singing and he is the singer. He did this for the first few tracks, jumping about like a bit of a douche until he got tired I think, cause he kinda stayed behind the mic after that.

He tried and tried to get the crowd going, starting a circle pit but all the wee hip emo kids were shocked - some physical activity with physical contact - and stayed well clear. It meant a large open circle with a few older guys (of mine and Colins age) to show these little kids what it was and what it meant. I have not pitted since the last time I saw Hell is for Heroes, and that was a long time ago. My theory on this is thus; these kids like the music but don't know how to dance to it other than just dance. Pitting is going apeshit, jumping around, body slamming, going mental, and these kids don't want to, they just like sitting about listening to the songs on the steps outside Borders, looking glum and writing poetry. Also, the music is sort of not heavy enough for the true pitting I am talking about, so I think Jared Leto is a bit silly for spending a lot of time trying to get one going.

10.00pm 30 Seconds to Mars leave the stage.
Yup. 45 mins from the headliners and they leave the stage. One of the shortest gigs I have ever been too. Me and Colin were suitably disappointed, though Shayan said it was great. It was not. The did not even play all the songs from their only album. Very, very disappointing. If you are wanting to come back Mr Leto, you will have to put in a lot more effort.

Also, Glasgow knows it is one the best places for artists to come to, so many bands say so. No need to keep saying "Glasgow you are fucking insane".

Note: I thought for ages about making this a serious "Music" post like the Idlewild one, but it turned into a bit of a rant, so I changed it. Fucking Emo kids, listen to Slipknot and System of a Down.

The Tale of Rock Steady 6: Ronseal.

So, I'll get out of the way first. I won a chance to buy two tickets for the LiveEarth gig in Hyde Park on the 7th July 2007, and I cannot go. So, I am opening it up to the first person who can email me (sheeldz@gmail.com) gets the text message instructions. It costs £55 per ticket, and it is a rather nice line up. Only 60000 tickets are available out of the 220'000 that entered, so I suppose I am lucky.

Due to negotiations with certain parties, the offer has been recinded. Rar!

Onto this weeks tale of Rock Steady. Wow! What a rocking show! Lostprophets were amazing, with heavy riffs, banter with the audience, and large fights in the pits. I was backstage, and they were all taking cocaine off groupies backs, shagging each other, kissing random stewards, even I got my balls licked.

Actually,I am sure you have worked out, I did not steward Lostprophets. No siree. Sometimes I wish I would end up doing what I was told I would be doing.

I stewarded a book signing. Rock and Roll.

I was asked to work on the other side of the SECC with Paolo Coelho, an esteemed author (of which I had never heard of, and had to admit this to himself) of many books. After some muddled management trying to figure out how best to sort this whole thing out (which gave me a few moments to speak to hima dn his staff)I was then put on the doors inside the auditorium and listened to him talk about his life and other things. It was really interesting, but not the gig that I was expecting. I got away at 9pm, but will be paid till 10.30pm anyways, so its all good.

I'll tell you one of his jokes. A man lives in Italy, and goes to bed one night, and in his dream whilst he is asleep, an angel comes to him. She warns him of "a great flood" and God will keep you safe, you will survive. He wakes up and sees that it is raining; it rains for days upon end. On the third day of this rain, a group of police men come to his house.
"We are evacuating the village" they say.
"I am not leaving. God said I would be fine, and I have faith" the man says.
On the fifth day, the water level has risen to above the first floor, and they arrive with a boat.
"Come on, you must come with us or you will surely die!" they plead.
"No, you are asking me to question my faith. God said I would be fine through an angel coming to me in my dreams. I will stay."
The water rises to above the second floor, and in a final attempt to rescue him, the arrive in a helicopter and throw a rope at him.
"Pick up the rope! You will surely die if you stay!"
"No, I am not moving. I have faith in the Lord."
So, he drowns.

Upon arriving at heaven, he is bewildered.
"How can I be dead?" he proclaims to St Peter.
"Well, there was a flood..." explains St Peter.
"But I got a message from God, from an angel that I would survive! I cannot come in to paradise if God is a liar."
St Peter would not normally take this sort of blasphemy, but humours it. "I shall check with God." he says.
St Peter returns, "I have spoken to God, and he said that yes, he sent you an omen in the form of an angel, who did say you would survive."
"Yes? So how can he explain my being here" exclaims the man, at his wits end.

"Well," says St Peter, "He also sent you three fucking rescue parties too."

Note: I editted this post a second time because I noticed that I mentioned his "wife" which is in correct, as actually it turns out he is a bit of an occultist and probably bisexual. Research about him revealed some rather intersting tidbits about his life, of which he made no mention of, and I have managed to change my perception of him rather dramatically.

The Tale of Rock Steady 5.5: SECC Spin Off

Tomorrow night I shall be working for the first time at the SECC, so there will be a brand new Tale of Rock Steady Spin Off.

Just keeping you up to date...

Oh, who is playing? None other than Lostprophets...

The Tale of Rock Steady 5: The Glasgow High Life and The Bank Rant

Semi (titter) finals are the final stages that normally a team can get to without having to meet one of the Old Firm. This year however, rather refreshingly the two old firm teams have been pretty rubbish in cup competitions, and Rangers failed to get to the semi final of the Tennents Scottish Cup, the game that I was in attendance for on Sunday. I should have been at the one on Saturday for the Celtic vs St Johnstone game, but due to initially Pam and Sarah's 21st Millport thing, but then for my Grandad and Gran's 75th birthdays, I had to miss them. Shock horror.

I turned up at 10.30am prompt, and was ushered into the Media Room to get briefed. After 1 hour of standing about doing nowt, we were told that yesterday went off without a hitch, and it was excellent. More today please we were told.

The Millennium Suite is the largest and most posh part of the hospitality at Hampden, where it leads straight onto the Royal Box, and the Important People Chairs. It was mostly unexciting due to the fact that there were only two famous people, Alex McLeish and Gareth Southgate, that I cared about. Both spoke to me, or at least talked at me. I will most likely be in that area for the Uefa Cup Final, which will be exciting as last time (the Champions League Final) the Beckhams were there, the King of Spain and other dignitaries were there. The fact that 3/4 of the teams in the Uefa Cup still are Spanish means that the King will probably be there again, along with Michael Platini (Uefa President) and Blatter (FIFA president), along with some proper footballing royalty like Sir Alex Ferguson and others (I was told a few of the people who have been invited).

So, I have updated you on Rock Steady, I think it is time for a rant about something. Something really annoying, and morally wrong.

Banks.

It takes, apparently, 3 working days for money to electronically transfer between two nonexistent places, where if I was to take the actual cash out, travel around the fucking world and then give it to the person, it would take less time! Also, note "working" days, aka not weekends. I did not know computers only worked week days. They must have to go to the shops to buy chips and bytes to eat. Ha, a pun.

It does not stop there, the fucking bastards have the cheek to hinder access to my account about some security problems, meaning no cash for me, offering me no explanation what so ever.

Seriously how do bankers sleep at night. Wait, they don't, the blood sucking vampire slutty bastards.

More ranting will come later...

Chapter Zero

Instantly I am awake.
The sheer surprise of the quickness from which I escape the darkness of sleep startles my self, and I lie for a few seconds wondering what woke me. The light coming through the curtains pin points the wall paper, a triangle of golden glow. The curtains are dancing, swirling, moving ever so slightly with the wind coming through the open window. I still have not figured out why I am so suddenly awake. I sit up, to get a look at the room. It is with motion that I realise that I am not alone in the room, a person is lying next to me in the bed. Something is in the corner, a shape that I cannot make out. When I look directly at it, it vanishes. Only out of the corner of my eye can I see it, and it is a black shapeless mass, without borders. The shape is pulling colour in; the blackness is not a shade, it is the absence of any light at all.
It is suddenly upon me. I feel the darkness taking me in, swarming all over my body, and I taste the colour, which I have never experienced. My eyes close over, though to be sure of this I am not, as it consumes me to the point of agony, but I am not feeling any pain.
As quickly as I woke up, the blackness is gone.
I am standing in a completely white room. A single light bulb hangs from the ceiling, which upon closer inspection, stretches to infinity. The bulb seems to hang in the air, floating, holding on to the notion that physics and gravity are watching with interest, curiously wondering how it is staying there, but not bothered by the implications.
The room is more of a space, a vast nothing expanding beyond possibility and reason, my eyes have trouble focusing on the infinity.
Suddenly, a man appears in front of me. He might have been there since I first started standing there, time does not seem to work in the same way here.
He speaks to me.
"You have died. You have 23 hours to stop your own death."
And, with a whoosh of time, space, matter and anti matter, my life is reset 23 hours. I find my self standing outside my house, at the bus stop, with my briefcase in my hand.
And so, my Deathtime begins.

The Tale of Rock Steady 4: Time and Time Again

Missing in action, taking my time, getting lazy. All of the above...

As I promised, here is a new installment of The Tale of Rock Steady.

On Saturday I was in attendance at Parkhead for Celtic versus Motherwell, and I was put into the "reserve" team, a group of 10 stewards that hang about until they are needed. I was no needed until after one hour of standing about doing nowt, when we were deployed into the exciting queue management outside, which involved me telling punters "to keep moving" and "place your teamcard against the bar code reader".

Christ, the excitement.

The main excitement was the story told to me by one of the more impressive members of the Rock Steady team, a filthy woman that has the voice of a sailor, the vocabulary of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (Swearing Edition) and the grammar and eloquence of a fax machine. It is like listening to Barry Ferguson reading Hamlet, with a golf ball in his mouth. Her story centred around "her man" and his "brawl" (pronounced Braiaaawallll) with his brother, and how he got "stuck" (impaled) on a piece of scaffolding.

She was not making this dramatic, she was talking as if this was just her normal weekend.

Another observation that gives me pleasure is the ability and want of everyone in the job, be it Protect Event, Upfront, Rock Steady or even the Police, to try and out do each other with tales of how long we have been working for. I yawned while standing outside the gents toilet at halftime, and ProtectEvent Bint A said "Wake up, Ahve bn wurkin since 8 this morning" to which I have no response, because I don't give an acrobatic fuck how long you have been working for, it does not make me less tired, see? Once one of these conversations starts, everyone chips in, with things like I am working at the Carling tonight, won't get home til 5am" and "One day I worked for 30hours straight" etc etc.

Like I care. I am still tired.

The Smiths

I have recently discovered the Smiths, which nicely coincides with Q doing a large feature about them splitting up. Try Strangeways, Here We Come, possibly their best album.

The Milk Round

I have been running around getting as many interviews as possible to try and get rid of this money that I don't have, and buy a car. Also, I fancy an Xbox 360. I went to London, Jacobs, Aberdeen for IGL and Aberdeen for Gyrodata (where I met Jonny for a pint, to which I still owe him one).

And all of this for what?

Gyrodata this morning phoned me offering me a position, at £29k starting.