“I hate digital cameras, you can’t even see what you’re doing!” says Anton Corbijn as he snaps a shot on a recce. Every time I see him on camera, he seems to struggle with technology, like the rented gear that won’t focus properly on the Joshua Tree shoots. And there was that time he took polaroids of me while complaining it was a borrowed camera and he didn’t know how to work it. The shots were blurry. In Quirijns documentary too he keeps saying: “That’s not in focus!” and claims his work is never “perfect”. But we get a very clear picture of him.

What a touching, skillful documentary it is. I love the shots of Anton alone, standing front of stage watching the Arcade Fire soundcheck, and the blurry shots of him watching them play table tennis. I almost felt a kinship with him. If only I were as tall, as talented.

The score, composed by our mutual friend, is very prominent and it does two things: It makes the documentary more of a “movie”, a drama. And it echoes the roar of the sea that also features strongly.

It’s the sound of this constant, stifling Dutch protestant oppression going on in the guy’s head: “must work harder, must be worthy”.

“I love this coast line,” Anton says walking on the beach near The Hague, “But I usually see it from up there…” The camera turns around and you find out he means he only ever sees it from an airplane. He’s always on the move, living out of suitcases and he says he loves travel, loves the idea of going somewhere and then bringing part of it, the experience, home. But his sister worries about his crazy work schedule and that one day, he might collapse.

Much is made of his ability to see things. See more of things. More than other people. Bono talks about ‘light’, the medium Corbijn works with, and framing it with shade, or darkness. I think his height helps too, a different angle on his famous subjects, who are so often vertically challenged.

There weren’t any icons on the wall when Anton grew up, not in his religion. His – mostly absent – father was a minister, his mother a minister’s daughter who wasn’t allowed to marry her real love. (“But you were happy with dad, weren’t you?” Anton asks her. “Ach, well,” she answers.) There was chapel, and at the dinner table talk of sickness and death passed as conversation. But never icons.

So he’s drawn to them and creates them.

After the screening, he’s called up on stage after the producers stumble through their presentation, cue cards in hand. Don’t let the Dutch speak in public. We’re not good at it.

Corbijn, in comparison, is eloquent for a self confessed loner. He thanks the director, in particular for the footage of his mother who died shortly after the documentary was finished, and he states:

“I’m glad we can go back to focusing on my WORK rather than my person.”

John Calvin has a lot to answer for.

Drifting and Tilting – The Songs of Scott Walker
Barbican Theatre, November 13, 14, 15

review to follow

Pictures of the Rogue’s Gallery show at the Barbican in London last Monday. Not as good as the Dublin ones, circumstances were a little more difficult and restricted.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Setlist (unverified)
Dance Me To The End OF Love
The Future
Ain’t No Cure For Love
Bird On The Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire?
Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye
Anthem

Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Gypsy Wife
Boogie Street
Hallelujah
Democracy
I’m Your Man
Take This Waltz

So Long, Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
Sisters Of Mercy
If It Be Your Will
Closing Time
I Tried To Leave You
Whither Thou Goest

Free ear plugs – the proper inner ear kind – were given out at the door, but it didn’t help the band one bit. The French promotors thought My Bloody Valentine’s volume was dangerous and their sound techs adjusted accordingly. Singer/guitarist Kevin Shields apologised to the audience: ‘Sorry it doesn’t sound like it should…’ Apparently, French law states concerts can be no louder than 106 db. MBV exceeded this limit by 9 to 19 db.

Despite the drop in volume it was still pretty damn loud. It’s the loudness that makes a My Bloody Valentine concert a physical experience. The bass guitar makes your insides churn and your pants flutter while the projected back drop images disorientate. The result is a powerful drug.The sheer noise is what gives the show its character. The band members themselves add very little to it, personality wise. Vocalists Butcher and Shields remain unfazed, singing ethereally, eyes focussed on infinity. Apart from a shy ‘hello’ and ‘thank you for coming’, they remain mute.

When the band released Loveless in 1991, I wasn’t much into shoe gazing. I still prefer more theatrical acts, but I’ve learnt to love the melodies this band creates. That’s why I took the Thalys to Paris to see them, finally back together after 16 years. There were no Dutch dates on their schedule.

During their last song, the 25-minute long ode to noise ‘You Made Me Realise’, the crew pulls the PA on the bass drum and bass guitar. The band stop and Shields motions signing papers – alluding to a clause in their contract allowing them to play at their preferred volume. He disappears backstage to demand the PA be switched back on. The rest of the band hang around on stage, slightly bemused.

Eventually, the song is continued, but bass an drum are pulled again and again. It’s shame for the band and the noise-junkies in the audience, but I was fine with it. I’d finally heard ‘Soon’, ‘I Only Said’ and the other Loveless-classics. Without damage to my ear drums.

My Bloody Valentine, Le Zenith, Paris, July 9, 2008

Setlist:
1. I only said
2. When you sleep
3. When you wake
4. You never should
5. Cigarette in your bed
6. Come in alone
7. Only shallow
8. Thorn
9. Nothing much to lose
10. To here knows when
11. Blown a wish
12. Slow
13. Soon
14. Feed me with your kiss
15. Sue is fine
16. You made me realise

More My Bloody Valentine pictures on Flickr.

The minute Elbow started their show with most of the band members blowing trumpets, I knew we were in for a treat. I’ve loved Guy Garvey’s voice from the moment I first heard Leader of the free world on MTV, but I’d never seen the band live before.

This was my first show in a long time. I’ve been lazy about going to gigs, skipping most of the
ones I’d bought tickets for this year. I’m glad it was a good one.

There’s something quite moving about Elbow’s songs and Garvey’s voice in particular, which is often compared to Peter Gabriel’s. I hear it too. It’s that other wordly vibe that Gabriel has in spades. It’s more subtle in Elbow’s lead singer, but it still affects my tear ducts. I felt myself welling up a number of times, particularly during the first 15 minutes of the show.

Elbow is a band I like, but have never invested in before. Haven’t bought their albums, haven’t learned their history. I didn’t even know the singer’s name before last night. I don’t know what the songs are about, but now I’m eager to find out.

No pro cameras allowed at this show, so I only took a couple.

Starbuck: Now, if you were human, you’d be just about ready to start offering up some false information about the location of the nuke. Some tiny thing that might get you a reward and maybe spare you a few minutes of this. But then I keep forgetting, you’re not human. You’re a machine.
Leoben: I am more than you could ever imagine. I am god.

Battlestar Galactica is a weird show for me. I stopped watching it back in 2003 when the first season was in progress, finding it too dark for my mood back then. I like darkness a lot, but at the time I wasn’t up for it. When my head was in a better place, I started re-watching everything and now think it’s fantastic. I can’t wait for more and I am sad it’s ending, but happy it will end before it starts to suck. I’m also pleased a spin off, Caprica, will be made.

Starbuck: Permission to speak off the record, sir?
Tigh: Granted.
Starbuck: You’re a bastard.

The strange thing is I don’t like anybody in the show. ‘Like’ on lots of levels. I am not a fan of any of the actors, I don’t find anyone particularly attractive, I don’t care much for them as individual characters… they’re all bastards. But I love the show, love the ensemble, love how they interact, love the way everything looks and I love how smart the show is and how it touches on various political and religious topics.

Romo Lampkin: There is no greater ally, no force more powerful,
no enemy more resolved, than a son who chooses to step from his
father’s shadow.

If I had to pick a favourite on the show, it would probably be Romo
Lampkin, who only appears in a handful of episodes in Season 3. Played
by the always charming British actor Mark Shepard
(Firefly, Medium)  Romo’s presence managed to make me forget the utter
drudgery of the Starbuck/Anders relationship, if only because I kept
wondering why Shepard was putting on an Irish accent for the part.

Shepard himself is a fan of he series, he called it
‘the most political show on television’ in a Q&A session last year and practically begging Ron Moore, the show’s creator, for a part.
His love for the material shines through in his performance.

Baltar: Congratulations… You’re not Cylon. 100% human, and
very, very bright green as well… You couldn’t be more human if you
tried.

BSG in ways is like the West Wing, another show so dense I can watch it again and again and again and never get bored. What’s so good about Battlestar Galactica is that it’s not about the scifi, just like the West Wing wasn’t about the President. It’s about us. Which everybody who is watching the show already knows, but now you know too.

I’m bloody tired of those Taiko drums though.

The support act, Huron, also played the JD/Cure and Xymox field, but their American singer (who looked more than a little bit like Chris Moyles, poor sod), infused some roots elements not unlike The Cult.

‘I’ve had it with all these new bands,’ said a friend of mine earlier this week, ‘they all sound the same.’ She’s right, you know. I’m bored. It’s time for something new, this 80s revival is getting on my nerves.

“White people cannot get enough of 80s music, partially out of
nostalgia, and partially since it was the last time that pop music
wasn’t infused with hip-hop or R n’ B stylings.”  (from Stuff White People Like)

I didn’t bring my ‘real’ camera, so all I got was a shot with my Ixus. Excuse the grain.

The EEE pc is one of the most satisfying buys ever. It weighs nothing. I don’t even feel I’m carrying it. Despite that, it doesn’t look cheap or feel like a toy. (I can’t vouch for the other colours, but the black version looks like an ordinary laptop. Just a lot smaller.) There’s no reason not to pop it into my bag and take it everywhere I go.

It works (after plugging it in and/or charging it) out of the box, starts up in 10 to 15 seconds, has a preinstalled interface that anyone can understand, comes with oodles of software including games, an open source office suite, Firefox, Thunderbird, excellent WiFi, a photo viewer/slideshow, screen capture, a news reader, IM client, Skype, etc, etc.

While I’m not completely new to Linux, I’m not that familiar with it either. I use *nix commands on the server that hosts my sites, but my home and work desktop PCs have always run Windows or a Mac OS. So I don’t know much about the various incarnations of Linux.

The EEE runs a custom Asus version of Xandros by default. Once I switched from the ‘Easy’ desktop environment to Advanced it looks a lot like a rip off of Windows XP – which is almost disappointing. It’s not the most exciting look. But I didn’t know Linux GUI’s were this advanced. I thought there’d be more command line stuff to get to grips with, but you get lots of menus and right click options, just like in XP. Again… that’s almost disappointing. I guess that’s why they called it “EEE, Easy to learn, work and play”.

The trackpad does the job, but isn’t great for prolonged usage. It is small and the left and right click button feels a little stiff. I plugged in an old mouse which worked really well, so I bought a nice small notebook mouse from Microsoft which works even better. The keyboard could have been better too. I have to hit the space bar pretty hard to make it work and I find touch typing difficult in any other position than seated at a desk.

I mentioned switching to the Advanced desktop. Out of the box, the EEE starts up with an ‘Easy’ interface, which is just a couple of tabs with large icons on it. If you want to get the most out of the machine, use the Advanced desktop. It used to be an option on the menu, but Asus decided to market the machine as an appliance rather than a pc, so they took the option out. You have to put it back in. It’s pretty easy to do, following these instructions: ‘Enable Advanced Desktop mode‘ from the eeeuser.com wiki. Note that personalising the EEE environment almost always involves opening a terminal window and doing some command line stuff. So stick to Easy mode if that scares you.

The EEE can play quite a few different video formats, even .mkv files, although there were some synch problems with the file I tried. What the EEE can’t do is play the ipod compatible formats, mp4/quicktime h.264. But no worries, if you downgrade the supplied mplayer, it will play those as well.

Firefox is preinstalled but the browser’s chrome will dominate a large part of the tiny screen. You’ll have to fiddle with settings a bit to make better use of your real estate. In fact, Opera seems to be the better choice, especially if you use that browser’s fit-to-width option. You’ll have to install Opera and then customise it following instructions from the the eeeuser.com wiki to make the most of the space you have.

To make your EEE a portable jukebox, ideally you’d want to install a bittorrent client, but I haven’t got round to that. I tried a Firefox torrent extension, but could not get it to work. For now I’ve settled for a Limewire clone called Frostwire. I’m not a big fan of the Gnutella protocol, since I prefer the high quality rips found elsewhere, but it will have to do for now.

Wrapping up this review, the Asus EEE is a fantastic little computer. If you get one, spend some time customising it with help from the EEE user community. Buy a small mouse. You’ll need at least some extra storage so one or two SD cards will come in handy, and/or a USB flash stick. And remember, if your system dies while you’re customising it, you can easily revert to factory settings by hitting F9 during start up.

Photographers should consider this set up for a great portable storage and post-processing solution.

Verdict: Really, really bad Buffy, without the making sense.