About Me

I ramble about a number of things - but travel experiences, movies and music feature prominently. See my label cloud for a better idea. All comnments and opinions on this blog are my own, and do not in any way reflect the opinions/position of my employer (past/current/future).

16 June 2013

kidofdoom

They burst on the scene a few years ago, and after some notable hype, they disappeared - seemingly another good band lost. While I had never seen their performances live, their music certainly appealed - instrumental rock.

They have re-formed, and are currently on a national tour, though not playing a lot of gigs. Last night, they had a great performance at The Town Hall in Newtown (who were also celebrating their 3rd birthday). An annoying thing about venues like Town Hall, is that there isn't much else around - thus, given that the opening band, Gateway Drugs, was starting about 2 hours after the advertised start, M and I decided to go have coffee and dessert at Cats Pyjamas instead of hanging about. We caught the tail end of Gateway Drugs performance, which features a great vocalist, especially the cover of Yvonne Chaka Chaka's "I'm Gonna Stop Loving You".

Instrumental rock is weird - often you expect lyrics to kick in, but it never does. But it gives the band space to do so much more interesting things with the music, and cross boundaries with musical genres. With a 90 minute set, and kidofdoom probably played through all their published songs. Often the boundary between songs was blurry, but their on-stage energy and the music itself was amazing. 

It has been a while since I went to a proper gig in a night club - and kidofdoom was certainly a great band to go see live!

Movie: Iron Man 3

I haven't bean to a "bean bag" cinema before - and must say it was disconcerting (is this hygienic?) while being possibly the most comfortable way to watch a movie. Although I had been meaning to go watch Iron Man 3 for a while, something (usually better) always came up. 

The movie itself was notable for some fine acting from Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin, but was off course dominated by technical gizmos, big explosions and corny jokes; and ultimately the good guy (as always) wins; and the bad guy is not necessarily who you think it is. But ultimately, it seems to have been a farewell to Iron Man, at least as a solo character. 

While the bean bag cinema experience was nice, the theatre decided to cut the credits scene, and not show the after credits scene. Oh well - there is at least YouTube for that :)