Well as you have no doubt guessed from the title, I attended a Duke Special gig last night at the Glee club in Birmingham with the very cheap price of £6 for admission. Okay so you may not have guessed the when, where and how much from the title but you know what I mean

I first heard Duke Special performing "Portrait" in late 2005 on the Jools Holland show and was instantly impressed by how different the music sounded from anything I had heard before. At first I enjoyed listening to the song for this fact but quickly developed a liking for it and the other great tracks on the album "Songs from the Deep Forest".

The gig was, simply put, amazing. The music was great and the whole act was very entertaining, visually too. I could watch it all again tonight and enjoy it just as much. It was as good as my expectations were and better. I particularly enjoyed the variety of instruments played that night. There was, a piano, a keyboard (or synth?), a clarinet, a bass guitar, an electric guitar (which was at times played with a bow), a saxophone, a most unusual drum kit setup, some stick like instrument with bells, springs and blocks which is struck with a drum stick of which I have no idea as to it's name, an accordion and a whisk and cheese greater. All played by four men, though of course, not at the same time. I was surprised by how good a cheese greater played with a whisk could sound!

Read More...

2 Comments

Well, a free copy of Vista through my membership of the MSDNAA (Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance), Windows isn't my favourite operating system but I like trying new OS's all the same. So here's a quick run down of Vista.

Three days ago I took the plunge and upgraded my XP partition to Vista. Tri-boot (XP, Linux and Vista) was not an option. I was not keen on letting the HD hungry Vista eat away at my Linux home partition.

So first impressions? XP with a shiny skin. Second impressions? XP with a shiny skin and some GUI reordering Third impressions? XP with a shiny skin, some GUI reordering and possibly a more secure system.

Read More...

0 Comments

0 Comments