karohemd | 4 Jul 2005

4 Jul 2005

In short, it was fantastic! The venue (grounds of Leeds Castle) was gorgeous, organisation was perfect, it didn't rain, the sound was probably the best I've heard at any open air concert.

Drive there was no problem, it only slowed down once on the M25 because of gawkers (accident in the other direction). Getting to the actual venue was a bit adventurous as it involved extremely narrow country lanes with just enough room for one car and maybe a slightly wider bit every 500m or so. Was there about 16:10, so 50 mins before the gates were supposed to open and had a good parking spot. The queue wasn't very long yet but that wouldn't have been a problem anyway, as I had a reserved seat.
The gates finally opened at about 17:15 and the queue moved at a leisurely pace towards the castle and around to the "arena". Block 2 was sadly to the left of the stage and my seat was at the very left so the view angle was such that I could just see the centre front and right of the stage. Sound was good, though so not that bad.

The gig actually started about 10 minutes ahead of advertised time with Alision Moyet who was brilliant. Very soft and melancholy, jazzy tunes, sung in a wonderful voice, perfect for a summer evening. The best of her set was a superb slow blues version of the Irish traditional Raggle Taggle Gypsy (anyone who's seen The Inchtabokatables or Fiddler's Green will know this, too).

There was a short break, couldn't have been more than 20 minutes or maybe half an hour and The Man appeared on stage.
It was pretty much perfect. Perfect sound, no glitches and fantastic music. About 100 minutes of pure music.
Morrison doesn't actually have a lot of stage presence, he's just a short, portly man in a suit and hat who lets his music do the talking. Absolutely wonderful.
Was actually surprised that he still plays Gloria (the encore) considering that he isn't that interested in much of his old material.

I took some photos which are a bit crap as I was far away and only had my small digicam with the broken display (can't change settings anymore). When the security guards let people finally get off their seats and dance around, I managed to get a bit closer but I completely ruined the shot. :o( With my D70 and the 70-200, it would have been reasonable. Oh well, I'm not that fussed about it.

The drive back was even less problematic.

All in all, a good day.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: tunes from the night in my head

I recently went through my Killing Miranda photos of the Norwich gig last year and after doing some modifications came up with this one of Ricky:

( Larger version behind the cut )
[crossposted to

killing_miranda]

Current Mood: creative

Boy dies after falling on knife

That sounds soo wrong.
"...Police aren't treating the incident as suspcious anymore..." but shouldn't the mother/parents at least get in trouble for neglicence (leaving him unsupervised in the kitchen with dangerous implements in easy reach)? Telling a four-year-old to not do something once is hardly enough to prevent him from doing it again.

"There was also a standoff in Edinburgh near the Sir Walter Scott monument where riot police stood three-deep to stop a mix of about 150 clowns, anarchists and local people."