Uni days

I trust we've all read this?

Three years dossing at university? It's the only way to train for life

I never think back to uni and get misty eyed about the lectures I attended.

Alright, actually I do sometimes, especially these days 'cause back then having a row with some Toby or Clarissa in a seminar about politics and popular culture was considered the 'work' part of going to uni, as opposed to the 'work' part of life these days, which is a lot less interesting and takes up a much bigger part of your day.

I'll always remember having a mature student from Coventry in my politics classes. He was a big burly working class lad, probably about thirty, and the happiest bloke on campus, everyone used to know him because he was so chipper and an all-round lovely bloke. I got to a class five minutes early one day (that's not the interesting part...) and he was sat outside in the sun with his walkman on. He took it off and said "Hello mate - ain't this grand? I'm sat here listening to some world music on my walkman and waiting to go into a politics class I really enjoy when, like the rest of my family, I should be down the car plant working my nuts off for a pittance."

He properly loved it and would put the rest of us to shame in the way that we would show up the kids if we went back to uni now - after getting a sniff of the real world, and coming to realise that the subjects you're learning about are in fact interesting, you'd enjoy getting stuck into the books and doing a 'massive' sixteen hours a week work, which is what they recommended you do at my gaff - eight on lectures and seminars and eight personal study.

Sixteen hours a week! You'd happily let them cut an arm off for that kinda of schedule these days and yet at the time there was more chance of a nose-fulled threesome with Emma Noble and Kimberley Davies than there was of going to all your classes and then doing the same hours again down the library.

On Fire

I watched Arcade Fire live from Madison Square Garden during lunch today, it was brilliant. The gig was streamed live on Youtube and directed by Terry Gilliam. Apart from the odd drop out and buffering issues, the quality was very high (1500kb) and the new stuff sounded very good (even Sprawl, a new one that they restarted after the drum machine started playing up during the first minute).

It won't be long before slight improvements in technology make quality issues and drops out a thing of the past, and I reckon that's when you'll see Sky Sports style pay-per-view tickets being sold. Watching it live on a screen wasn't half as good as being down the front, but it was almost as good as being up the back, albeit in a different way. When you're up the back of the big venues you get the vibe but not much sense of what's actually going on, other than what song they're playing. With this there were cameras all over the shop and when he went walkabout in the crowd during We Used To Wait there were cameras on him the whole time.

It don't seem too much of a stretch to think of a time when, like the premier League, going to 'premier' gigs is for rich folk (if it ain't already…) and normal folk and kids in the suburbs (see what I did there…) will spend their money on a TV ticket.

Might only work with huge bands, as the cost is obviously prohibitive and you'd need five figure ticket sales, but if Arcade Fire (or whoever) were playing in Manchester on a Thursday night and you weren't going out, you'd go what, a fiver, to watch it streamed live? How much is it for a pelt rom-com on Sky Box Office? If it had been Oasis in the mid-90s we'd have gone in a quid each, gathered round Dave's with cans of Strongbow and watched it before tearing off down the Ave at the mercy of our hormones.

The gig itself was a cracker, highlight being Power Out straight into Rebellion followed by Month Of May, Keep The Car Running then Tunnels. It was weird sitting at my desk getting goose bumps and wanting to down a pint and go mental. The goose bumps bit I mean. I quite often sit at my desk wanting to down a pint and go mental.

DB33

Bitter frontman not so Splendid etc

I went to see Richard Ashcroft at the Enmore Theatre on Saturday night, he was down here to play the Splendor in the Grass festival, which he was doing so the next night, and had played a gig in Melbourne on the Friday night.

He was decent. The crowd was mainly made up of ex pats and Micks (some of whom were dressed like Boyzone circa 1995, workboots and denim dungarees etc, very weird), and he played a decent mix of new (average guff) and old ('the classics'). Though in a place not much bigger than the Shep's Bush Empire (Enmore holds 2200, the Empire 2000), it was only about two thirds full, which I was surprised at given the amount of Brits over here and the fact that he hadn't been over here for at least a couple of years. In the classic sign that things haven't gone to plan, touts were punting out tickets outside for significantly less than face value.

Like that first Shed 7 'comeback' gig we went to, he spaced out the hits so there was a rush on at the bar and the bogs every time he played a new one, but there was still goose bumps when he played Lucky Man, Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Drugs Don't Work, Lonely Soul, Sonnett etc. Half the gig's on youtube already, here's Bitter Sweet Symphony.

He looked liked he was going to make my night by saying something like "What one do you wanna hear next?" before playing about a minute of History, then stopping and going, "There's that one, or..." then a minute of On Your Own, "or that one..." which was annoying.

But not as annoying as it would have been for any punters who decided to watch him headline a tent at Splendor on the Sunday night, up against The Pixies and Aussie heroes Empire Of The Sun, who were headlining the two main stages at the same time. There's various reports (here and here), but essentially he stormed off one song in, apparently fucked off with being put up against big names and getting a small draw as a result, or because he got tonked on the head with a bottle and waded in to the crowd to try and show the thrower the error of his ways. Either way, there's nothing the Aussies love more than someone who loves himself and gives it the big I am, so he's getting a bit of a shoeing now, as the comments underneath that Daily Telegraph article show.