Thursday night was the Immortal gig....totally awesome, even if it was far too hot in the Transmission Room. Skuldom were just plain awesome as per usual and Immortal were on fine form! ♥ the Black Metal! \m/
Got home and finished packing as I was heading to Wellington the next morning, think I got to bed round 2.30ish and had to be out if the door at 7am in order to catch my 8am flight. The flight sucked! Well actually it was a fairly normal flight but my totally irrational fear of flying makes any plane ride suck. Poor James tho - he always has to deal with me freaking out on planes and basically just being a right pain the arse but he had it double bad this time...I had the aisle seat, James was in the middle and there was some guy in the window seat who was heading to the big salsa conference in Wellington...anyway, we're coming into land and I'm all freaking out and the guy on the other side of James was sitting there totally white, eyes closed, praying to him self...poor James!
We land ok and are picked up by the awesome Becky who is letting us crash at hers for the weekend. I had Ben and Lozza trying to convince me to head into the Immortal/Skuldom gig in Wgtn that night but only having had three hours sleep I decide to give it a miss and save all my energy for the next night :D
Saturday - head into the Irish Bar on Cuba Mall to meet up with Morgies, Ricky, Justin etc for dinner before the show, then head down to the Hotel Bristol to meet up with Ben, Lozza and the Skuldom and Malevolence crews for a few drinks before heading down to the stadium. The first night was totally awesome! Lordi and Alice Cooper was fantastic! Kiss were awesome as well but there was a tad too much guitar masturbation and talking from them. Heaps of pyrotechincs, confetti, blow up balls bouncing in the crowd, zombie cheerleaders, the huge 30ft dragon with laser eyes, guys wandering around with smoke machines just pumping smoke into the crowd...sooo much fun! Alice Coopers stage show was soo much fun - he 'bet up' his daughter, staked a baby in the heart, was put in a straight jacket, put in a noose and hung, umm...all sorts of other random shit too! The second night was just as awesome...they had fixed the few sound problems they had the first night and it was all sounding amazing! Poison were up first and man they were fun! Had the whole stadium singing along to every song and Brett Michaels really knows how to work a crowd. Got Morgan to call me in the middle of Every Rose just so he knew exactly what he was missing out on....oh, by the way Morgan..a whole bunch of people have declared your Rock n Roll status officially revoked after you missed this one! ;P Whitesnake came out second, I don't like Whitesnake, they are freaken appalling and this show did nothing to change my opinion of that. The kept playing 'romantic' power ballads and shit well telling the crowd they should all get some good groping going on etc. They did play well, I will give them that but they are just utter crap! Finally...the man everyone was waiting for hit the stage...OZZY! He started his set with some pretty funny visuals then fully hit the stage with soo much energy and enthusiasm for someone his age. Played an awesome set with a couple of Old Sabbath songs thrown in (much to my delight) and just had the crowd going the whole time! Oh and there was a 13 minute (I shit you not) guitar solo by Mr Zakk Wylde.
I had this mate of mine Carl who bought Diamond pits tickets. He managed to get right up on the front barrier and the first night he was constantly shown on the big screen...kept flicking his ugly mug up all night, was totally cracking me up. I ran into him before Poison started the second night and he was waiting for his Ozzy meet and greet that he had won off the radio a month before hand...so jealous! He texted me after and said Ozzy was really awesome and funny and he got to meet Sharon as well! When I talked to him before hand he was soooo wired it was awesome!
Anyway...James and I took some Video (didn't get any of Lordi tho - it was a bit too light to pull out the camera and start the illegal videoing) but they aren't the best quality, too many lights, the focus on James' camera is a little screwed and it was way too loud for the camera speaker to handle so the sound is really really bad, and all you can mainly see is the lights from the stage but thought I share them anyway!
I also found some other vids on youtube that are a bit better quality with better sound (and were obviously filmed by people in the Diamond area) so these aren't quite as painful to watch:
I finally got around to uploading a whole bunch of photos that I have been meaning to since February (I'm not as bad as James - he's just gotten around to uploading the photos of his 21st from back in November so expect a HUGE photo update from him).
Anyway - photos....I've got a couple of entries to make but this one will be photos of Ruth and Justins wedding celebration and also Hana and Lily's 21st - both held at The Gin Room.
OK - so I took some of our favourite photos from Roger Waters and made them into a wee slideshow (with music!). Yes I was bored and I figured it would be a more interesting way to see the pictures than a standard photo post...and then of course I had to add in a title sequence and credits...just 'cause.
Its the first time I've done something like this so be nice and enjoy (and yes - the song is meant to cut out like that, it goes straight into the next song on the album).
I am going to share a vid that we took at Roger Waters last night. Its from the opening of the second half of the show (the Dark Side of the Moon half) and is pretty fucking cool!
The sound quality is pretty shit - it was soooo damn loud in there (the guy next to James and I had to cover his ears every time there was a guitar solo) that James' poor little digital camera had trouble dealing with it. The quality of the video is not as good as whats on our camera either - I had to compress it so I could upload the damn thing to youtube :(
But, here you go and enjoy:
*EDIT* Just cause I can I'm going to share the set list too::
Set One 1. In the Flesh 2. Mother 3. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun 4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II - V) (abridged) 5. Have a Cigar 6. Wish You Were Here 7. Southampton Dock 8. The Fletcher Memorial Home 9. Perfect Sense, Parts 1 and 2 10. Leaving Beirut 11. Sheep
Set Two (The Dark Side of the Moon) 1. Speak to Me 2. Breathe 3. On the Run 4. Time 5. Breathe (Reprise) 6. The Great Gig in the Sky 7. Money 8. Us and Them 9. Any Colour You Like 10. Brain Damage 11. Eclipse
Encore 1. The Happiest Days of Our Lives 2. Another Brick in the Wall, Part II 3. Vera 4. Bring the Boys Back Home 5. Comfortably Numb
You know I'm pretty sure for 'Have a Cigar' they were pumping out cigar smelling smoke through out the stadium...either that or someone near us lit up a cigar at that exact moment....
So, New Years saw a whole bunch of us road tripping outta Auckland for NYE - a whole bunch of us being : me, James, Gemma, Danny Dan Dan, Richy Rich, Elle (my fav girl ever), Rachael, Adam, Jason, Greta, Tim, Courtney, Ricky, Morgan, Sam, Hannah and James H. Destination: Gemmas parents place just outta Tauranga. Most of us left from Wairiki Road in a great big convoy that we managed to keep together pretty much the whole way down. Tim and Courtney showed up a little bit later and then later on the afternoon Morgies, Ricky and Sam showed up. James and Hannah were supposed to be there there that day too but ended up rolling in on the 31st.
We all set up the tents and got to drinking. The tent thing was a bit of a mission - James had borrowed a tent of his dad and funnily enough there were no pegs for the silly thing. It was one of those huge old tents that didn't use guys ropes - just pegs to keep everything up so we were in a little bit of trouble. Dan and James managed to get it up and scrounged a few spare pegs off people. They then decided that we needed make-shift guy ropes just to ensure it stayed standing so James improvised with metres of fucking network cable that he had in the boot of his car (GEEK!). For some reason James and I piked a little earlier than everyone else that night and at some point during the night I woke up to the sound of The Specials of all fucking things floating down the hill towards the tents. I was a bit confused at this point and thought I was at home with James blaring his music till I remembered that no - I was in Tauranga in a tent and James was asleep next to me. Turns out the Jason likes a bit of the old ska - told him he should go with James to gigs in the future.
The next day was pretty much spent drinking, swimming, watching Sam try stick a noodle up Flossies butt and waiting for nightfall so we could all get really fucked up. As you can imagine we did :) Theres nothing better than being with a whole bunch of people that you really like and all of you being fucked up and having fun. The spa got turned on and yeah - the night was just awesome, I was even being nice and getting beers for the boys stuck in the spa when they asked me to...... A bunch of us stayed up all night and I think at about 10 or 11 in the morning I gave up and had to go to bed cause I was really worried I was going to be a fucking grumpy cow if I didn't sleep. I think I got about an hours worth and then spent the next 6 or so hours lying the tent being bung. There was a huge thunder storm at one point which when James came down to the tent to see me we had to really yell at each other so we could hear what each other were saying. Then James and everyone else spent the storm sitting in the spa getting rained on just watching the weather. I got up at some point and went up to the house and we sat around being bung until eventually we all crashed out. Then the next day it was off home.
To everyone that was there - thanks for making it such an awesome New Years, you guys rock and I'm really glad we were all together (awww mush), Elle it was fucking fantastic to spend NYE with you again I miss you so much babe. Gemma - thanks to you and Dan for having us and your parents rock!! I told them that about 50 times on NYE while flying off my head but yeah - not many parents would let 16 or so people descend on their home for the sole purpose of getting really fucked up for NYE.
So yeah - here be a selection of photos. I warn you - there are a lot of them....oh and to everyone else that was there - I want copies of any photos you all took as well and I also have more than these so if you wanna see them - you'll have to come visit me :)
accomplished
cheerful
tired