Nineties TV Weekend (Is It Sunny Out?)

For some reason, in between bouts of sitting on the roof playing Scrabble in the sun, it’s been a bit of a nineties TV weekend. We’ve had too much sun the last two weekends anyhow…

First up has been American Gothic – a Twin Peaks-esque horror/supernatural series from the mid-90s that starred Gary Cole as the excellently ambiguous Sheriff Buck. A great character study in how people deal with someone who’s obviously the embodiment of evil, yet who’s consistently nice and helpful to everyone, of course always to his own ends. The DVD transfer’s not great, the series sometimes looks dated, and the really strange thing is that the episodes are on the discs in the wrong order (see wikipedia for the correct order), but even with all that it’s still held up really well 15 years later. As people said, it was ahead of its time and these days would likely have been an HBO series rather than CBS. Such is life.

On a slightly lighter note, Channel 4 on demand now has the hilariously surreal Mr Don & Mr George available for your viewing pleasure. Again, the order is slightly out, no idea why, but all six wonderful, bizarre and charming episodes are there to enjoy. Trailing the exploits of two men called McDiarmid, but not related, this is another series that was arguably way ahead of his time – an offshoot of the also excellent Absolutely (also available on Channel 4 right now).

Glasto at 40

The 40th Glasto – sun & colours. (More Photos Here)

I’m finding it hard to remember when I first went to Glastonbury, the grand-daddy of all British summer festivals and arguably one of the best music festivals in the world. Perhaps is was when I was at University. It was definitely in the 90s, which by all accounts means I must have been in my teens (coff). The special mix of hippy travellers, being able to camp in the festival grounds and world class bands made it something special. A 24 hour cornucopia of sights and sounds and chai tea, amongst other things. That first year we had weather that could only be described as ‘traditional English summer’ – a mix of occasional sun, showers and chilly damp evenings. None of that dampened my enthusiasm, and Glastonbury found its way into my heart.

The years that followed always seemed incomplete when I didn’t manage to make it to Glasto, the affectionate shortening of its full ‘Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts’ title. Even after the first year of torrential rain and mud floods, a year that the organisers were woefully unprepared for as were the festival goers, Glasto’s siren call would be there. “Come. See strange and wonderful things. Listen to many great and random bands. Spend a few days in a tent trying to sleep next to thousands of other people making noises like sheep”. There are many memories. Laughing in the mud. Sitting by our campfire in the green fields watching people climb over the increasingly high metal fence, or even pushing it over to cheers from the whole campsite. Watching the sun set and then rise again over the stone circle. Roasting in a tent from 8am in the morning as the mid-summer sun hits the site. Circus performers on stilts. Mulled cider from a big red bus. The toilets, ah the toilets…

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Charlotte Gainsbourg @ Shepherds Bush Empire

Last night we went to see Charlotte Gainsbourg sing for the first time in London. At a fairly busy Shepherds Bush Empire, a crowd that consisted of a large proportion of French speakers waited in anticipation for the actress daughter of the famous singer to show us her own skills. As you might expect, they weren’t quite up to the high bar Serge set, but Charlotte has created her own style to set herself apart and it works well.

The crowd responded well to tracks such as Master’s Hands and the excellent IRM, which work best with Charlotte’s soft voice, but it was for covers of her dad’s songs that the crowd went wild – especially a finale of Couleur Cafe. The singing shadow of Serge Gainsbourg is hard to avoid if you’re his only heir, but maybe it’s best to embrace your heritage at times. As Charlotte herself said in a recent interview when asked who she would invite to her dream dinner party?: “Ghosts. Yvan, my children and my father, because they never met.”

Space Invader in Action in London

Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a tad bit obsessed about Parisian street artist Invader. In fact this very afternoon was spent cycling round Soho updating my map of London invasions. Sad? Me? Anyways, in carrying out a bit more research I came across this video of Invader in action on the streets of London, cementing his 116th London invader to a wall. Hopefully I can get to it before some numpty takes it down.

Keep up the good work, Monsieur l’Invader!

Update: Here’s a picture of the invader.

The Latest Jesus-Phone Rises

Another year, another iPhone. But this year at the WWDC Steve Jobs’ presented something unexpectedly expected, the iPhone 4, and boy is it cute.

The ‘traditional’ iPhone front aspect is still relatively intact, but the new side bezel of aluminium is something very new, and indeed very ingenious as it incorporates an antenna. The latest iPhone also features something Apple calls a ‘retina screen’, a screen with resolution so high that your eye cannot perceive the different pixels. A screen the same size as the older iPhones, but with roughly 75% of the pixels of the iPad. That is stunning, and it’s a technology I can’t wait to see on any laptop screen. Twin cameras, front and rear facing, are now present – one replete with LED flash & full HD recording plus the ability to edit movies in situe via a cut down version of iMovie (available at a premium from the App Store), the other camera is set to let you video conference face to face (for now only over wireless). Then there’s the built-in gyroscope, that detects movement in three directions. What the what!

Having not held it in my hand, and only from the pre-emptive looks from Gizmodo amongst others, I can only guess how amazing it feels to the touch. Yes, unfortunately, I want one. Will this gadget-lust cost me? Yes, it will. Thankfully I won’t have to wait too long to be parted from my money, as it rolls onto UK shelves on 24th June.

Korea & Japan

(Not) Geishas in Kyoto

At the end of April this year we were lucky enough to head to Korea & Japan for two weeks. This was our first trip to this part of the world, and although it was way too short we did manage to squeeze in a lot – albeit mostly food. Oh, and taking some photos. About 7,000 of the buggers. I fear that I’m not quite at the ‘one exposure, per motive‘ level that I aspire to, and the side effect of this lack of in-viewfinder editing is a large amount of in-Lightroom editing.

So, as usual, apologies for not having posted any photos yet apart from the above, they will be up as soon as possible along with a full travelog. In the meantime all I can say is: Japan & Korea – you want to go to there. And we want to go back as soon as possible.

Flight of the Conchords @ Hammersmith Apollo

Kiwi Splendour – Jemaine & Bret in action (more pics)

From the very first moment that Bret & Jemaine, better known as Flight of the Conchords, took to the packed, ecstatic crowd at Hammersmith Apollo we knew we were in for a treat. Sporting home-made cardboard box heads the expectation was for We are Robots, but instead they launched straight into Too Many Dicks (On the Dancefloor), giving Arj Baker – Dave from the show & tonight’s support – the chance to show his rap chops. The crowd lapped it up and every other classic song the Kiwi duo rolled out, whether they were pitch perfect or slightly off with hilarious recovery. One surprise though was quite how potent Jemaine is. That man can deliver an accent, and a sexy pose, like no-one else in comedy today – with the possible exception of Matt Berry. Even Bret’s talented musical delivery & banter seemed sometimes to be playing second fiddle to the ‘llama faced’ god.

All the crowd pleasers had been delivered by the end of the almost two hour set, no mean feat when you’re two guys on stage all the time. We Are Robots (with Jemaine’s amazing Schwartzenegger impersonation), Hurt Feelings, Woo Song, Business Time, Carol Brown (with Bret as all the exes) and a finale of epic mock-rock God proportions with Bowie and finally Sugalumps. Boy, did they give us sugalumps. Especially the lucky front row who received Bret in full effect as he clambered into the crowd. In between the fan friendly songs the guys took time to regale us with stories from their tour, involving the hilarity of muffins and elevators delivered with deadpan perfection.

A perfect night, with the only downside being the ridiculous difficulty in getting tickets when they first went on sale. I believe the gig sold out in three minutes, not helped by a ‘maximum’ of six tickets per person. Six! By the 5th gig the Conchords announced the guys had sensibly started asking for photo ID and will-call picket for everyone, but this was for Wembley Arena rather than the relative intimacy of Hammersmith. Something really needs to be done about the touts scalping their profits, not only the ones outside, but the corporate off-shoots of companies such as TicketMaster who encourage people to tout and re-sale tickets to profit from real fans. ID pickup is likely the best solution and it really can work, as I saw earlier in the month at Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace gig in New York. That aside, the extra money spent was worthwhile (see, I’m part of the problem…) I just wish it had gone to the men who deserved it.

The Conchords gave us an amazing night and showed us that New Zealand isn’t all Hobbits. There are Elves and Maoris as well. Sexy ones at that.

A New Day, A New Dawn

A new dawn on Wordpress. In which the author attempts to explain, yet again, why he hasn’t been blogging much of late and promises to do better next time.

Welcome to a new chapter at MattHobbs.com. Hello there! Expect much the same as before, except we’ll be brought to you by the wonders of WordPress rather than the classic goodness of Blogger. What does this mean to you, my readers? Well pretty much nothing will change, the site stays the same other than in the way it looks. My posts will still be here, you can click on links to go elsewhere and so on and so forth.

Oh, there is one thing some of you may need to change – if you use a feed reader to read my posts then you’ll need to update it to point to the new feed otherwise you won’t get all my posty goodness. Sorry about that.

While we’re here, let’s talk about how even more irregular my posting has been of late… Blah blah blah. Yep, the standard refrain of the lazy blogger. To be honest if you want regular, well crafted web content you’d do well to check out my friend Mau as he weaves a fine set of words about life, music & photography life clockwork. For more regular (albeit shorter) words from me you may want to pick up my twitter feed, @ultrahi.