crazybobbles

Today I was suppose to go Tate Modern, there were 2 previous attempts of going but were all cancelled out on the last minute (literally). The 3rd one no doubt followed the same pattern (again, cancelled at around 5pm odd). So I decided to invite Michelle to spend the night in London and piss about. Tate Modern was actually closed by the time I got there so there really wasn’t much point in being there. I did take a few really nice shots of the millennium bridge and other things.

Pan shot of London

Millenium Bridge

Really really love this shot. The blue in particular. Its so yummy. Alot of people have done this shot before but I really enjoy this one purely because of the blue sky. It was quite a fun day taking photos without a tripod. Things would have been a hell of alot easier if I was carrying one but sometimes you simply don’t plan these things and just forget to bring them. I had my elbows on the back of the bridge to take this shot. Took me a few goes to get it JUST right. Bit annoying when people walk by though.

Michelle arrived at around 6.30pm and we just had a nice night out around London. Michelle was very supportive in my photography and encouraged me to take alot of nice shots, especially this one.

The ubiquitous shot of Westminister’s Underground Logo next to good old big ben. Taken to show a weird sense of perspective etc. Quite alot of people had that photo on their flickr but it definitely seemed right to do another one haha. I kept doing alot of tourist accents when I was around big ben. We talked about spending a whole day following a tourist and taking photos with them hehe. It’s weird that we hardly take notice of places like this. In a way, the whole photography vibe has made me appreciate London more.

We also went to Buckingham Palace to take photos of the place, there wasn’t really many people around so it was all good.

We ended around Picadilly Circus and had some food at a place called “Miso”. Though we initially were going to go to some Italian restaurant, and Wagamama, and Yo Sushi, but passed them all up haha. I had duck and noodles whilst Michelle had a nice big bowl of Ramen Noodles. She couldn’t finish it off bless hehe. Also tried teaching her a bit of chopstick action but that didnt turn out too well. I guess it is a bit tedious, some waitress had to hand her a fork hehe.

We then had a quick visit in funland, hoping to play with the mechanical bull, but it wasn’t active that night so boo. So yeah, pretty much did the typical stuff ie. Play DDR, a few games of air hockey and this…

Was a very pleasant evening. I felt slightly better from being stood up 3 times in a row for one event but yeah.

Right, this pretty much continues from the previous post where I leave the pub with Michelle and Caff to enjoy Howling Bells. Michelle and Caff were pretty much sorted with guestlisted and I had managed to buy my ticket a few days before the gig and collected it on saturday.

Anyway, we quickly made our way to Camden Town, the gig was in Mornington Crescent but that station was closed off due to engineering works and all. Once we were there we had a nice walk all the way to the venue. We were slightly worried that the gig would start before we have arrived since we got there at around 9:15 odd. Turns out the band wasnt there still! Michelle and Caff managed to get aftershow passes with their guestlists. I did contemplate whether or not I should go, Michelle did tell me she probably could get an extra aftershow pass from someone but suddenly the thought of travelling back home in the middle of the night on a sunday using the night buses suddenly brought shivers down my spine. No way was I going to take the night bus, so I decided to just leave the thought of going to the aftershow and just enjoy the gig.

Anyway, I managed to catch max and aino at the venue, they were pretty much hanging back for the gig whilst I had an urge to get to the front, and so me, Michelle and Caff went to the front :P. The funny bit was when I told Aino that I was heading to the front, I said “right we’re going to head to the front”, and she must of misheard me because her reply was “oh its ok, I dont think we’re going to goto the front”. So i told her that I was going to the front, not them haha. Was fun.

We managed to mingle our way into the front (always take the sides). We reached a point where we couldnt go any further and all. Was pretty close to the stage, about 2 layers of people in front of us. Sadly the front was infested with quite alot of tall people.

Howling Bells finally arrived on stage, the crowd roars and the band goes right at it with “The Bell Hit”. The gig was amazing, I was so glad I managed to see them play again. I was very disappointed when I was late to see them at Wembley Arena. I must say, some songs really started to hit me as being really good songs, in particular “Blessed Night” and “Setting Sun”. I really like how she uses a distorted mic (or perhaps a talk box modulated mic) to sing them. She sings it in a funny way too.

I took quite alot of photos, most of them were bad, the initial batch were bad bad, but slowly I managed to squirm my way a bit closer to the stage, one of the girls in front of me thought i was leaning my arms on her friends back to take photos and told me off, silly blind bint haha.

I eventually stood behind some tall girl and her mate who were constantly dancing to the songs the band played. Nobody wanted to stand behind her because she was ridiculously tall. Taller then me!

Anyway, I managed to squirm a few shots whenever her head moved to the left. I’m getting alot better with photo taking since I rely on shutter speed settings and really keeping my hands steady when taking the photos. I’m really happy that I’m making full use of my compact camera since I previously wouldnt have used the shutter priority functions, it would have been hardcore automatic all the way.

During the photo taking, the tall dancing girl in front of me kept wiggling her butt at my direction. It was rather distracting whilst I was taking photos and enjoying the gig haha. She did it about 7-8 times, was practically a lap dance. She was ok looking so I didnt tell her off haha

Howling Bells were fun during the gig, so were the crowd, occasionally the crowd would heckle and the band would reply to them, one in particular was a guy going “I want your babies” to Juanita, obviously it was directed at her but the guitarist replied “do you want my babies?” whilst Jaunita continued to joke around and ask the guy in the audience whether he wanted his babies and how that could be arranged.

Juanita even managed to tell a story while the band was sorting out their gear, she asked the crowd “do you want to hear a story” and the crowd jeered “yeah”, she quickly replied “i dont have a story, but if you give me a topic I’ll make something up really quickly” haha. She talked about how she didnt like potatoes, how she took a photo of a giraffe in the zoo and how psycho britney spears has become haha. So yeah, we all had a laugh and the gig ended pretty nicely (with Low low low low low happening).

Afterwards Michelle and Caff needed to use the toilet but since there was a queue we decided to loiter a bit. When the queue died down a bit I told her I was going to head off since I was pretty much wrecked from a two day meetup anyway. Not to mention that… DUN DUN DUN! I had ANOTHER howling bells gig to attend to tommorow!

So yeah, I pretty much dashed back home after the gig, Michelle did send me a text during my journey home saying how she managed to get an aftershow pass, but by the time that text arrived I was pretty much in Victoria station, the point of no return haha. I was glad I didnt regret not heading home, I really needed that time to relax and sleep from a hectic day.

Rightio…

Howling Bells part two!!!

I cant remember what I did before the second howling bells gig, I think I pretty much slept till the time I needed to get ready haha. Howling Bells was doing a signing at Virgin Megastores and Michelle had got guestlists for the signing. This meant we were allowed to watch the gig down at the side of the stage, it was a slightly fancier place but still *shrugs*.

Today I went all out and brought my DSLR camera. Since it was an instore signing there was no way I was going to get turned down for carrying my camera. This meant I can really take some nice shots to make up from the slightly shabby shots from the previous night.

Me and michelle met up at the back of Virgin Megastores where we got our guest passes, we were then sent back into the store and went down to the basement for the gig. My pass was a “Guest” pass, and it appears that photographers had “Media” passes. So I guess I was out of bounds with the photo pit people haha. After a wee bit of waiting and bantering with Michelle Howling Bells arrive on stage. Juanita wasnt wearing her crazy leopard print dress and red sparkly head band (well she wouldnt would she? she’d stink if she wore it a second time and people would say nasty things about her haha). This time it was a black jacket and some black top type thing.

During the gig, I used my new 55-200mm lens to take photos of the band from the side since the front was riddled with band photographers going nuts at the band. It was harder taking photos at this angle but the plus side was I got to shoot the entire band from this angle, and they were pretty neat.

Anyway, the snapping was awesome, I felt quite alive taking photos with my DSLR camera, its a different feeling compared to snapping them with just a shabby compact.

Eventually Michelle persuaded me to just ask the security guard whethere I could goto the pit and take photos there. The beauty of it was that you didnt need to say “could I get in, I’m “media” “. I just asked if I can get in, not telling him that I am a press photographer or that I have a guest pass instead. So yeah, he pretty much assumed I was one of them and let me in the photo pit, with the other lions snapping at poor Howling Bells haha.

I managed to change my lens back to my 18-55mm lens since I was pretty close to them. The photos were so much nicer when you’re only less then a meter away from the band.

So yeah, those are some of my photos I took for the signing. The gig itself was amazing and we managed to hang around and get a few things signed, including setlists and my album. The day was pretty nice I must say. Got quite alot of positive comments afterwards from flickr about my photos. You can compare these photos to my previous night photos or even to my photos of howling bells during placebo.

Right, part 2 of this epic epic journey haha.

After waking up we were STRAIGHT AT IT with super smash brothers. yet again it was a two on one situation. It was particularly funny how stu just jumped STRAIGHT out of bed and went straight into gaming mode. It was proper intense, I got a glass of tropicana to drink whilst playing (was good shit, woke me up like a motherbiatch).

Kazzie and adam were pretty astonished to see us at it STILL. Adam did join in for one bit and surprisingly won the game by beating me. Of course, one has to remember that I was playing against adam and popey (dunno if inn was there, i think a computer was playing too) So i had to kill off 10 or 15 peeps out of the 5 lives I had. The end was annoying because i actually landed on a bomb which is why he won. Now he’s all smug about it. I think they were all starting to get smug at it, but not until they started giving me one on one matches where I showed them who’s boss haha. With stu i managed to kill him with just one life (didnt lose one), with adam I only got hit 5 times whilst he managed to lose all 5 lives.

Inn played a bit more too and then eventually it was time to pack it in and all. We were all up and ready to start packing things up and tidying things so that we didnt trash up kazzie’s house and all. I was in a tantrum trying to find my lens cap haha. Adam recalled seeing it somewhere but then kazzie was far too lazy/not bothered to help me find it (grr). Eventually I gave up on the idea of finding it and just started to pack things up. Kazzie brought my some rice cakes that she forgot to show me last night. I managed to munch a few down that time haha.

Anyway, after all the packing up, pissing about with kazzies 55-200mm lens, (taking photos of her cat haha), we were heading back to London for some more meetup action. I had a wii, and a dslr camera to take care of which meant I had to split up with everyone to go home, have a bath and meetup with them all.

This time kazzie decided to drive us to a decent station this time, Brent Cross station. Adam managed to lead us to the wrong station and got us a bit lost and all. Was tedious but at least we didnt have to take the watford route and all. The whole journey was painless and I managed to get home quite quickly and all.

This is where I lounge about for a bit, surf the web, take a bath, charge as much battery as I can, and get changed into a new attire, this time I was sporting some stripey green top.

Everyone else was partying it up at funland whilst I was getting ready and all. I left at about 3pm but was informed that they’ll be in nando’s so theres no point in me going to funland anymore :(. So yeah, quick travel to nando’s

Everyone met up, popey, inn, kazzie and adam all arrived late due to the fact that people were far too tired and lazy to wake up early and get to the damn place. people mingled but apparently they were all bored until I arrived haha (kidding).

I got straight into business and ordered some nando’s. The waitress was weird, her name was Serena and she seemed to be a trainee at nando’s, during my order she was complaining about being tired and was frustrated when we’d order things AFTER she has taken the order. Kev wanted to tap her.

After ordering food I got nice and comfty with the likes of kev and co and got down to the crazy array of challenges

Tetris challenge
Not exactly a challenge but we had 5 ds’s going playing tetris ds, was pretty fun. I managed to kick everyones arse at it haha. People were clueless about the items option and better yet, kev (the second best player there) is a nobody in my books haha (22-1). haha thats pretty harsh, but you know, I have played it for a long time haha.

Wasabi challenge
hm, I went to yo sushi to get some sushi and wasabi to do the wasabi challenge (was very successful the previous day and it ACTUALLY has some levels of difficulty and all!)
So yeah, ordered 4 maki cucumber rolls and 2 salmon nigri. I asked the crowd who wanted to participate and got the 6 people i needed (next time i’ll buy more haha). The participants were:
Me, Mona, Kev, Adam, Abbey and Aino.

I managed to ooze out as much wasabi goodness out of the 4 wasabi satchets I ordered. Me and mona picked the salmon nigris and we all ate the sushi at the same time. The best bit was the aftermath, cameras going wild whilst we take photos of everyone’s reaction to the sushi.

It was explosive. Me, Mona (and apparently kev) were cool with it, Mona still being the true winner since she actually ENJOYS the wasabi haha. The other two went running away like little 6 year old pubescent girls as the wasabi started to hit their noses, causing them to either spit it out or just cry in their nose.

Salmiakki challenge
This was the highly random and unpopular challenge made by aino haha. She made a few participants eat some of her random sweets and stuff. I managed to dig them into my nando’s chicken and eat it some time later when i was eating my chicken haha. Uhm…. yeah, the wasabi one was better haha.

Mona’s “I’ve never” game
Mona managed to do a quick game with everyone which involved revealing stuff people have or have not done. I won’t explain the rules since its tedious and confused kev but yeah. This game we get to discover hardcore muse fans, and other forms of muse board mind games. The game got a bit tiring since it was suppose to involve people drinking whenever they have done that particular thing, but uhm. we stood up each time and it ended up being too tiring to play haha (kev moaned).

The concoction game
A very spontaneous game I made up on the spot when people were trying hard to find a game to play haha. Rules were to pour stuff into a glass, and drink it, the next person then adds something else into the glass and drinks it, and yeah, its just a test of who dares to continue to drink it.
All sorts of stuff were added, including; salmiakki crap, salad leaf, peri peri sauce (extra hot), olive oil, ketchup, chips, coke, PEPPER! cheap nando’s mayonaise sprinkled with peri peri spice and all sorts of shit haha.

It became pretty vile, and then I wagered £5 for someone to drink the glass of vile. Abbey was brave enough to accept the challege and drank the whole damn glass (well, ALMOST). It wasn’t a good sight haha, she went to the toilet to puke it all back out haha. She was definitely brave for doing it and i felt slightly guilty for making the bet haha (though i was hoping someone manly like kev or chizzleface to actually accept the challenge (panzies))

Nando’s chicken wing challenge
This was meant to be the main challenge that everyone planned to have but it didnt happen, people started leaving too quickly and the other challenges were crazy enough, this meant I didnt get any free extra hot wings to eat off people
Other bits and bobs in nando’s
Nowt much really, michelle and caff later on joined us all but sat on another table and drank red wine, Michelle got a bit tipsy from it all bless her. Meanwhile back in our table, some truth or dare questions were asked, quite alot of table slamming and phoenix wright style pointing were made

Alot of greasy chicken was consumed. Well the annoying thing was that I couldnt eat my food in peace without people playing that damn “I never” game haha.

The waitress, “serena” was a bit arsey haha, i tried to dare her to get someone to drink that glass of vile for a pound haha.
We stole some nando’s cocksticks on our way out mwahahah, now I have two haha.

Randomness outside
After nando’s a few people left and we were wondering around for stuff to do. We eventually went to play DDR where kazzie wanted to challenge me into a game of DDR.
Played a few songs and it was fun. Wincy tried the other DDR like game made by konami, it required the use of your hands to dance as well. Its not as funky as the one you see in funland where people try to make something cool out of their hands by doing alot of unneccessary bits and bobs but yeah.

Kev and strippers
We were walking down soho where kev was trying to find some gash, he did go into a “friendly society” which was apparently a nice bar instead of strip club. A few strip club ladies wanted to entice kev to go in, we even got a 3 for £10 deal going on but we eventually passed haha

Pub
We eventually went to a nice pub called Ben’s Crotch (Croutch, whatever). And settled in for a bit of ds lite action, well lite and phat, wincy had let us down by still owning a crappy ds phat haha (though she bought a lite later on). Anyway, games that were played were mario kart and good old tetris. With mario kart I managed to win the first two races and then came second for the other two. It appears that some fucker kept throwing red shells at me so I couldnt overtake kev. Twas pretty unfair but meh, least i didnt lose to him haha.

We also played tetris, whoever played me kept going “shit, wtf?!?” as I pounded them with multiple tetri, it was only at the last game where kev suggestion slightly tipsy michelle to distract me whilst I was playing. I was groped senseless during the battle and lost to kev of all people eurgh haha.

We had some more banter, and finally the goodbyes and all. Loads of man hugs, girl hugs and banter near the end.
This was where me, michelle and caff said our goodbyes as we went to see Howling Bells live. That will be on another entry since its a gig of its own and all.

Today I was invited by the manager of Murder in Monochrome to take photos of the band. It was quite an honour to be invited to take photos for a band. I accepted it and was gustlisted (plus one) to the gig so I could take photos for the band. It was quite an impromptu invite, I was tempted to goto the gig anyway but being guestlisted kinda pushed it for me. Since it was all promptu I managed to invite B as my plus one.

Michelle and Caff joined in too. The gig was pretty awesome, I had all the freedom I wanted to take photos, pretty much my little photo pit haha (except I wasnt with other peeps). I had a word with the band and they told me to go nuts on the photo taking and even if it needs be, I could go on stage to take photos haha. So yeah, was pretty awesome knowing that I had that freedom and all.

The gig was pretty awesome, the photos were pretty good. The venue only used blue lighting so I was pretty restricted in terms of lights.

I loved making the keytar look like some space weapon of some sort.

Some panorama esque photos.

After the gig, we went to a pub to see Stevie, I havent met him in ages, it was his birthday and a load of his friends were there to celebrate with him. It was quite, we didn’t talk to most people (Stevie included) but it was fun nonetheless. I’m usually good at finding things to do when I’m bored haha.

Michelle managed to get guestlisted on two gigs tonight. She invited me as her plus one so I instantly jumped in on the deal. The only money I needed was travel money, I had access to a bus pass so I could have went for free, but since I always ran late and didnt like the idea of taking a bus unless its a night bus and I’m forced into it, I thought I might as well took a tube to the location (so thats £2 gone for the rest of the evening).

The first gig was at Bull & Gate, we were to watch Brontosaurus Chorus play, was a pretty chirpy gig. Reminded me alot of Tilly and the Wall. I spent more time checking out the gear though haha, in particular their use of cubase for drums hehe. I really should ignore stuff like that but you know. I saw the photographer who was at White Rose Movement, should really say hello and talk about dslr cameras haha. Though she’d just laugh at my Canon 400d hehe.

After the gig me and Michelle left to see TCTC at Koko, we didnt get a chance to say hi to Matt but I’m sure he was pretty busy that time. So yeah, off to Camden Town. I had no idea about the other bands who were playing, probably NME endorsed bands for fans of NME type music. We took a bus there and already saw a massive line for the gig. The people going to the gig looked like twats, most of them reminded me of the people in Nathan Barely, only worse because they’re right in front of you. One boy in particular really needed a punch in the face, he sported some proper emo clothing, wore a stupid tight jeans and a tight pink top that made him look like a cock, and lets not forget to top it off with stupid hair and some crappy glasses. *shudders*
Thankfully the queue we were waiting for were filled with slightly more mature people, though you still get the occasional knobs. We managed to get slightly nicer guestlist tickets, they were “Directors Box” tickets, which was basically a private ledge for pass holders only. It was guarded by security and all so it was pretty cool. Most of the gig was spent focusing on things other then the band, we werent really there for them and their music wasn’t too good anyway.

During one of the support band gigs Michelle managed to toss an ice cube into the crowd haha. We initially thought it’d just hit the floor or just hit them somewhere like the shoulders or arms but nooo. It hit some random bald guy RIGHT in the head. We INSTANTLY ducked down as the guy tried to find who did it, it was really funny. Michelle was slightly guilty about that but it was just too funny to feel guilty for haha.

Anyway onto the main attraction, The Cooper Temple Clause. Since they had a new album coming out, about 2 thirds of the songs were from the new album. I’ve had a few listens to the album before the gig and it wasn’t too bad, though they have kinda gone downhill a bit.

Since Didz isnt in the band anymore, Kieran was left to play bass for a couple of songs. It was pretty cute and funny at the same time (funny in the sense at how interchangeable the band members are). At one point Ben went over to him and said something, I imagined it was something like “How’re you doing with the bass there? you ok?” hehe.

Halfway during the gig some photographer just barged in between me and Michelle so he could take photos of the gig. Was pretty rude, though I get the feeling some of the bitterness was based on the fact that he owned a decent dslr camera haha. His photos looked pretty good as well. Though I’m guessing not as good as the photo pit people.

Someday I’ll be in the photo pit (hopefully Howling Bells hah) and making people feel jealous haha. I should make my own company and try and blag for photo passes every time hehe. The sound was pretty bad, at one point the volume just randomly went down and back up again. I think the sound techs for the venue messed the thing up pretty badly. They tried their best I guess hehe.

The show ended in some panzer attack action. Was a bit weird at the beginning but eventually jumped into some proper moshing action haha. Notice how Tom had to take off his jacket because he was really into it hehe (I think someone threw his jacket back at him, Airplane style).

Anyhow, I really enjoyed both of the gigs, was good that I only spent £2 on travel to see the gigs. We left the building as soon as the band finished. Michelle booked a cab back home (15 minute journey, lucky) whilst I waited for the night buses.

This was probably one of the most painful experiences in night busing I’ve ever experienced. The amount of waiting was ungodly. I think I waited for an hour for the bus I needed to board, but that bus didnt even turn up so I just took a N31 to somewhere like Chelsea so I can hopefully find another bus there. Bad thing about taking night buses is when you go to ones where you havent taken before, you get really nervous and scared that you’ve took the wrong one and when to actually stop. At one point I thought I was going to Brent Cross! I tried surfing the n70 phone to keep my motivation up, but msn didnt seem to function that well, was a bit of a waste of £1.
Eventually things got a bit better and I arrived at Fulham, to catch a 14 bus and then a 93. I bought some cookies for the journey as I was getting pretty hungry. Eventually the 14 bus came (waited for about 10 minutes) and I was in Putney to wait for my last bus back home (could have walked but waiting for a 93 was cooler).

During the long wait, I decided to just take some photos of the surroundings. One in particular was at Putney Bridge

I tried using the rule of thirds to compose the image, hence the 3 lights and reflections. I already tried it on the lamp post

Was quite a fun lamp post, and afterwards I took some long exposure shots of traffic, I liked this one quite alot

All the photography kept my mind off the fact that I was outside at 4am. The 93 eventually arrived and I got home safelty woo! Really tiring journey, why do people party so late? Ah well, least it was for free and I did get to take some cool photos.