3 years old today!!!

That's either my mental age, or this very website. You decide :)

Gosh, 3 years of writing rubbish here. I'm so sorry.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:02:42 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Top Gear

Simply the best comedy show on TV. No question. And I don't like cars, or even have a car!

Tonight's show had total moments of genius - catch tomorrows repeat on BBC2 if you didn't see it tonight...

As I posted that they used a little snippet of "Don't Let The Man Get You Down"...Hahaha

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 8:37:15 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Monday was a good day

Firstly, I received a few CDs in the post. They were Tears For Fears CDs. Some of them had my name on. WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!! That's a 20-year-old ambition sorted then. Shame it won't be out in the shops, but hey it's a start!

I could be slightly sad that due to the font they've used for the artwork - it has a very curly 't' - it could look like "Simon Chornton" instead of "Simon Thornton" to some people (in fact one person had a copy up on eBay that described it like that, so people are mis-reading it I'm sure) but that's hardly worth the brain space really. If my mix of "Call Me Mellow" was used on the commercial CD I would have been more upset, I suppose.

And, back to Monday being A Good Day, I went to see Star Wars Episode III at my local cinemarama. Genius. As I'm sure many others did, I watched Episode IV as soon as I got home. The way the end of III leads into IV is so well done. In fact the whole of III is like a very slow crossfade between II and IV. Very clever.

The question is now, of course (!) is how to introduce the whole saga to someone that (somehow!) has never seen any of the Star Wars films. Part of me thinks you should show IV, V and VI first, and then I, II and III to fill in the back story. I'm not sure going from Episode I onwards would actually be as interesting; certainly as I is rather dull round the edges you might not actually want to plough through the 10 hours that follow it...

That said, I actually found Episode IV rather slow going after all the chaos and mayhem in III, gosh....

Oh, not wanting to whine etc, but can I officially complain about this line in Episode III:

"Not if anything to say about it, I have"

Jeez!!!!

Back to the music news, and there's a small irony in that the TFF single (well, with the other track as the main one - it's a double A side thinggy) is released on the 13th of June. Why is that ironic? Well, there's another record coming out that day with my name on it, and I even play guitar on it....oh well, perhaps I was trying to be greedy. Haha. Oh, OK, I've just looked it up and it has been announced that there's a Fatboy Slim remix on the next Jem single "Just A Ride". So there you go....

It's perhaps a little bizarre, but I've just had a quick peek at the Radio 2 playlist [link will be out of date for this post in about a week from posting] and the 'A' list contains Jem, Tears For Fears and Ben Folds. Which kind of sums up the last 3 months of my life. OK, I now officially feel really old....

Also, in slightly less detailed news, I am working on a project I can't talk about yet, until it's been all officially announced etc, but it's been an interesting few days. More when I can.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 5:02:22 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

TFF gig - Cafe de Paris, London, May 5th 2005

Another day, another TFF gig. Though on a different scale and rather different atmosphere to the one on Tuesday night....

Myself and my prettier half turned up at the Cafe de Paris in London at 6:30pm, VIP tickets in hand (oooh...get us!) and got our (free!) drinks and waited for TFF to come on. I was standing on the upper level, to the right of the stage, fractionally further back than Roland's position and, ooh, 10 foot in the air I suppose. Or, looking straight down onto Charltons head, to put it another way! Quite a strange but fun angle to watch a gig actually!

It was just a four-piece this time, it looked like there just wasn't room to get Doug on the stage to be honest, it is a TINY venue. I would guess there was around 350 people there. Roland held on to his acoustic guitar all night, Charlton flipped between playing an upright piano and his acoustic guitar too. I couldn't actually see Nick from where I was, but it sounded like he was there - there was someone very good playing the drums at any rate! Haha. I spotted a Powerbook hiding away just by the drum kit, playing some keyboard parts here and there (what software do you use for that Roland? Do tell! It's what the comments form is for!)

As Roland (I think it was he) commented when they came on stage, "gosh, this is intimate!", and he wasn't wrong, The people at the front of the stage were no more than 2 feet away from the boys. Looked strange, and I'll suggest it was a little unnverving for them (the band, not the audience!)

The set list, in no particular order (apart from the first 3 songs) was:

"Everybody Loves A Happy Ending"
"Call Me Mellow"
"Sowing The Seeds Of Love"
"Mad World"
"Head Over Heels"
"Pullin' A Cloud"
"Everybody Wants To Rule The World"
"Who Killed Tangerine"
"Closest Thing To Heaven"
"Secret World"

Generally, it all sounded great. For many of the new songs, the minimal almost "unplugged" style works very well indeed. I thought tonights' performance of "Secret World" sounded much better than the one played at the Apollo on the 3rd. "Closest Thing To Heaven" actually rather rocked tonight, they really played it with some passion.

Roland seemed on top form again, trying out some new jokes on the crowd (and asking if anyone present had been at either of the London gigs, just so he could work out which jokes he could get away with re-using!) - such things as introducing "Who Killed Tangerine" with something along the lines of "here's our murder mystery number, it's all about a killer than targets people with ginger hair" (well that's the gist of it anyway). There was also a couple of references to it being Election day here in the UK, but it's too hard to explain that bit right now...

Curt had a smile on his face generally too, they did kind of make up the set list as they went along, leading to a few funny comments from him in the style of "well, ok, I didn't know what we were gonna do next, but as you've just introduced that one....."

Both Curt and Roland sang really well tonight. I don't doubt that they do most nights, but tonight you could really hear what they were doing. The Girlfriend, who is one of those annoying 'young people' and so is allowed (I'm told) to have a slightly different perspective on all this, did make a comment along the lines of "Gosh, aren't they good live?! Normally people don't sound as good live as they do on the records, but they really can sing!" which is actually quite an endorsement, trust me! I'm educating her, slowly but surely....

They played for a total of 55 mins, and didn't come on for an encore much to the disappointment of the crowd. Then again, to be totally honest, I don't blame them....they played really well, really gave it their all, but it was a stranger crowd than I experienced at the May 3rd gig. There was only about 10 of us there, I suggest, that knew any of the new stuff. Even worse, I heard someone say "oh, my favourite track of the night was that 'Mad World' one, and it's not even their song!'. Jeeez, what can you do, eh?

Well done boys, really. I thought you did really good given the slightly odd circumstances.

All this happened on the day, by the way, that my remix of "Call Me Mellow" was played on Capital Radio, It wasn't supposed to be though, they shouldn't really play things that aren't going to be commercially released, but hey at least it's had 1 play! So if you happened to hear it on the radio today, you were very lucky indeed, it may well never be heard again!

Generally, though, Tears For Fears - you're still great.

Call me - you can get the number easily enough. Let's make a record or something....


Posted By Simon Thornton @ 11:54:56 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Tears For Fears - aLive and Well! May 3rd 2005 London

I was initially a little nervous about seeing Tears For Fears live. After all, it's been nearly 20 years since the last time I did (gosh, so long!) and since then I've learnt rather alot more about how music is made and performed....and as much as my professional knowledge shouldn't affect how I view a live concert, there's not really any way that it can't...

So, yes, a little unsure around the edges about it all - what if I really didn't enjoy it? Would it then have been better not to have seen them at all? I didn't want what could well be the last time I ever see TFF live to be a bad memory.

And you have to bear in mind here that recently I've gotten a little nearer to the whole TFF thing - in the professional sense - than I ever thought I would - to the extent of having full Pro Tools multitrack sessions for both "Everybody Loves A Happy Ending" and "Call Me Mellow" sitting on one of my studio G4s as I type this...[unfortunately my remix of CMM wasn't used on the commercial formats in the end - shame - although I am told it was used for some promotional purposes]. I now have rather a lot of inner knowledge of how TFF put records together these days, but that's all the subject of another blog post, for another day I think.

So, anyway, Mr Blantant Optimism and I turned up at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, bought some beers and sat down to watch the show...

And what do we hear them playing before the gig starts proper, you know that bit when they play some CDs over the sound system to get the punters in the mood?

Well, it was only "Don't Let The Man Get You Down". You know, it's a track from "Palookaville". You know, that Fatboy Slim album I engineered, mixed and exec produced. Eeeek. I even happen to play a bit of guitar on that track. So there I was thinking "OK, this is now a little strange". I could almost try and claim now that I've played guitar at a TFF gig. Well, kind of...

However, it did show up something less than good. The sound. It was, well what's the word? Rubbish. Someone needs to look at the bass management in that place, it was all over the shop....er....hall. The sound didn't get too much better throughout the gig unfortunately, but you did kind of get used to it after a little while.

So what of the gig itself?

Excellent!

Roland, especially, had the most ridiculous grin on his face throughout the whole performance. Perhaps it was something to do with the slightly mad shirt he was wearing (that or he'd tripped on a bottle of happy gas on the way to the stage!). I don't think I've actually ever seen anyone on stage enjoy themself so much for an entire show. It was a total pleasure to see. He cracked some really good gags and generally looked like he was in his element[al]. [sorry!]

As has been mentioned in other reviews elsewhere, they're in a slightly difficult position these days as there were plenty of people present that haven't heard anything TFF have done since 1990 or so. And so it's no surprise that some of the newer material didn't quite get the reaction it probably deserved... There's not a lot that can be done about that I suppose, I guess all they could do is exactly what they did - play the new stuff with as much passion and life as they could and hope to turn people onto it (which is kind of the point of gigs in a sense, isn't it?)

I thought one of Curt's comments was most interesting, "this is probably the last time we ever play London" and, you know, it could well be. Well, they're playing a little radio-only gig on Thursday, but as a general point it does seem that it was worth being there for just this reason alone. Luckily, there were plenty more reasons to turn up tonight.

It seemed to Tom and I that the best performance of the night was probably "Break It Down Again". To use a phrase, they totally rocked it. I was somewhat taken-aback by it to be honest, I mean it's always a track I've really liked but they played it as well as it's probably possible to play it. Awesome.

Other highlights of the night for me included "Head Over Heels", "Pale Shelter" (still works after all these years) and "Sowing The Seeds Of Love". Also worthy of a mention were "Everybody Loves A Happy Ending" (sounds a lot less Beatlesy done live) and "Who Killed Tangerine" (although this one really suffered from the poor sound, and I was surprised that seeing as it has one of the best choruses every written it didn't turn into a massive sing-along, perhaps another symptom of just not enough people knowing it). As you would expect "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" was probably the most popular track of the night, figures eh?, and even though it's still not a track I would listen to very often, if at all, they really did play it well I thought. Also, I think "Closest Thing To Heaven" seemed to work better here than it does on the record, it sounded simpler and clearer, which helped it alot I think.

To me there were a few tracks that just didn't work that well, namely the new version of "Mad World" - I totally get why they went this way with it, an attempt to reclaim it as their own perhaps, but it sounded a bit of a mess. "Snowhill", well that just sounded bizarre to me, and I don't mean in a good way. "Secret World" - well it's a brilliant track in it's recorded form however I'm not so sure it's possible to do justice to it live, at least not without a full orchestra on stage with them.

I thought it a shame that "Shout", the final track just like the old days, wasn't the massive finish it used to be. I rather liked the way the crowd would continue to sing the end part for many minutes...that said, I really liked the new programming on it. Nice one Mr Orzabal.

Overall, it was a top night out. They played their socks off and looked like they were all having a great time. The whole band were extremely tight and did everything justice, even the tracks I didn't like I have to admit were played very well indeed. And, generally, the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot.

So, what more could you ask for really?

(as you can imagine, all these running jokes about Curt now looking a little like Norman Cook are somewhat amusing....]

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 1:01:46 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Tears For Fears, Hammersmith Apollo Tuesday May 3rd

Very very good actually.

Will post up a proper review of it all tomorrow (Wednesday)

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:19:16 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

"...I've deleted....the Internet?!?!?"

5 bonus points for spotting where that title comes from...

I'm here, I'm alive (despite rumours) and have LOTS to talk about, just hang on a sec...

(currently being entertained by Lego Starwars on the PS2, Wipeout Pure on the PSP, Mac OS X Tiger, a Digi 002, mixing a couple of tracks, doing a couple of remixes for some people, you know stuff like that...)

[yes for reasons I won't go into the two posts previous to this one have gone all odd and it looks like they were posted today as well, it's not a biggie...]

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:21:02 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

NY, NY

We are in New York. Hurrah!

Some stories and pictures when we've created some!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:17:24 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Just Testing Like

Don't ask why, it'll be clear enough soon enough...

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:17:01 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []