Wir fahr’n auf der Autobahn…

Last night myself, Kate and several mates ( wotcha Jaz, Kirk, Dave, Milla ) went to see Kraftwerk at the Glasgow Carling Academy. Arriving about an hour after the doors opened we were greeted by the longest queue I think I’ve ever seen . We joined the end and proceeded to shuffle along in the rain till we finally made it indoors, 5 minutes after Kraftwerk were meant to be on stage. Contrast Glaswegian efficiency with that of the Germans if you will.

We had tickets for downstairs standing which packed us in with sold out crowd and as a result we couldn’t see very much without standing on tiptoes. I thought my fellow west coasters were meant to be short .

Kraftwerk kicked off their set a half hour later than planned, announcing their arrival with some rib shaking bass leading into the song ‘Die Mensch Maschine’. The curtains parted to reveal 4 sharply dressed suited men, as per cover of ‘Man Machine’, standing behind their ’synth stations’ in front of a huge video screen which flashed up ‘Mensch’ and ‘Maschine’ at the appropiate times.

They played the classics such as ‘Autobahn’ and ‘Das Model’ as well as songs from their new album and even had their robots onstage for the song ‘The Robots’ , all the supported by a backing of stunning visuals. The show was rounded off dressed in luminous green wired frame suits ( see pic ) to the delight of the crowd.

I don’t claim to be a huge fan of Kraftwerk but did enjoy their performance last night and will probably check out their latest releases, though it would have been nice to have had a better view. Downstairs standing? Never again.

BBCi Broadband

Recently I stumbled across the BBCi Broadband section of the BBC’s fabulous website, and quite shiny it is too .

G3 Tickets booked!

Today I booked tickets for the the Glasgow and Manchester G3 shows in June .

The Glasgow show will be held at the Clyde Auditorium, a venue which I have been to many times and like very much. Luckily I have managed to get seats in row C, right down at the front .

For the Manchester gig I shall be returning to the fab Manchester Apollo with seats in the very front row of the circle.

It has been several years since I last saw Satriani or Vai live and I am very much looking forward to seeing them again. In addition I shall enjoy being introduced to Robert Fripp’s material.

Mars a dead Earth?

So, at last we appear to have evidence of the existence of water on Mars sometime in its history . In conjunction with the apparent shaping of rocks and terrain from previous water flow this leads to the possibility that, in my mind, Mars is somewhat like a dead Earth. Question is, did it ever support life?

Hopefully further investigation will reveal evidence to support this hypothesis, maybe from the current rovers on Mars or even analysis of the ice from Mars’ Polar caps from a future mission. The talk of bringing Mars samples back to Earth for study also sounds promising and may allow us to form a timeline of the planet’s history.

All in all, it is exciting ( well to me it is ) as it is scientifically groundbreaking .

G3 MSN Chat Transcript

On the 23rd of February Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen participated in a MSN chat in which people could ask questions. Thanks to the knee-jerk reaction of MSN Chat UK being closed down ( as everyone on the Net is obviously a deviant ) I was a bit miffed that I couldn’t log on and ask some questions .

Thankfully though, a transcript of the session is now available.