Floody hell

Have the floods here been a big story back home? It's getting properly mental now. A huge part of Queensland, which is over thirteen times the size of England is flooded, loads of people have been killed, loads more are missing, and it's set to get worse. It's like something from the third world, or like when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

After days of flooding in the country, hitting towns like Toowoomba, Brisbane's getting it now and it's looking total madness. The photo above is outside the SunCorp Stadium, which is at least half a mile from the river - and inbetween is my office that I've been to when up there for work, as well as the hotel I stayed at. All the bods who work there got sent home yesterday and have obviously been unable to get in today, including a member of my team (more work for me, frankly I'm outraged...), meanwhile thousands of offices in the CBD have flooded, thousands of people have evacuated the city, refugee centres have been set up in sports arenas etc... it's carnage. The stadium itself is flooded.

After days of flooding there was another massive flash flood yesterday which caused what was termed an 'inland tsunami'. There's also a huge dam (called the Wivenhoe Dam, Essex fans...) that has reached 190% capacity and is threatening to break or flood areas upstream, so in order to stop that they're having to open the gates and let hundreds of thousands of megalitres more water into the flooded rivers.

There's already been a big Children-In-Need style telethon that's raised tens of millions for the disaster fund, and things have got much worse since and are set to get worse still. There are king tides set for Brisbane tomorrow which should take it to a new level, which is mental as it's a disaster zone as it is. There's loads of heart-breaking stories emerging, like this one.

It seems more mental as it's happening in a major city, like if the Thames flooded and Charing Cross and The Strand, Trafalgar Square and that were all under water.

Very weird. Err, happy new year!

Midgets in leather keks

Went to see U2 on Monday night, very good it was too. Even if you weren't a big fan you'd struggle not to get whipped up in the atmosphere with 80,000 folk going potty and such a massive spectacle as the claw, or spacestation as Bono called it.

I only bought a ticket on Monday afternoon. When tickets went on sale months ago (and sold out in hours) I decided not to bother - it was over seventy notes a ticket for stadium floor standing by the time booking was involved, and no one I knew showed any interest in going. I actually thought it'd been on about a week before as they'd been in Sydney for various things and had been in the papers and on the TV etc knocking about by the Opera House. it was my work's Christmas party last Friday and I was chatting to a couple of work mates who said they were going on Monday, and with 80,000 tickets sold, there were plenty to be had on Ebay/Gumtree so I got one for a few bucks cheaper than face value on the day, the lad even dropped it off at my office!

The setlist is here, though disappointingly, I preferred the setlist they did the night after, which had All I Want Is You and Pride in it instead of Where The Streets Have No Name and Bad. We did get a brilliant version of Hold Me Thrill Me though... which was relaced by Ultraviolet the next night.

All in all, very enjoyable, though Australia's shite at putting on big events - there were teams of police walking through the crowd and generally lurking around (all those middle aged U2 fans being well-known troublemakers and drug takers), and as with quite a few big gigs I've been to here, they shut the bar well early. I was one of the last people to get served and there was still a good 45 minutes of the gig left, which in a two hour set is virtually half way through.

Jay-Z was the support, which was good as he's someone I wanted to see but I wouldn't have lashed out cash and gone to one of his own gigs. He was good.

The lad in the picture is my work mate Iain, who's from Glasgow. We were trying to pulling weird faces but it's ended up looking like he's just grabbed my nuts.

Speaking of gigs - The Complete Stone Roses are playing here in January! They're doing a two hour set including playing the whole first album all the way through, the stand alone singles and some b-sides. On a Friday night no less! Know why I won't be going?

...IT'S THIRTY QUID A TICKET!

Fuck me! We paid twelve to see them at The Garage what, eight years ago? Fair enough prices only rise, and I might have gone to twenty, but thirty notes to see a tribute act!? I'm quite pissed off 'cause they're great, but that's taking the rise. Primal Scream are playing Screamadelica in the same venue the night after for fifty quid - and for that you get the actual band playing their early-90s classic album all the way through, not a bunch of Scottish chancers playing someone elses. I remember when I interviewed Ian Brown (have I mentioned that before?...) and he said he makes about three/four grand a year in performace royalties from the Complete Stone Roses. Based on these prices that'll be into five figures now... except it won't, because they're currently touring the UK and it's fifteen quid a ticket, which includes support from the "Kings of Lyon" no less! (Quite funny that I'm wearing a Stone Roses shirt in the U2 photo above.)

Gigs here generally take the piss - how much were The Scream in London recently? It's well seen there ain't been a recession here.

DD34

HarbourLife

I went to a one-day festival on the harbour on Saturday, appropriately enough called HarbourLife. (I took that picture, click on it for the big version.)

A mate of a mate won two tickets, couldn't go, so flogged them to my mate for fifty bucks, so off we went. It's quite a small one, and it weren't sold out, so it was nice and cosy, in a stunning location right on the harbour opposite the Opera House. The beer tents and toilets and that were in the trees of the park and stage was down some steps right on the harbour.

The Temper Trap were headlining, but I hadn't heard of any of the other acts on the bill, which wasn't surprising as they turned out to be dance acts and DJs (I'd vaguely heard of Metronomy, who are from the UK). I didn't know until I got there that it's normally headlined by a big dance act and the whole thing is more of a dance festival than anything rock-based. Which would also explain the heavy police presence with sniffer dogs at the gates on the way in. Which would also explain everyone being off their tits on pills by the time we moseyed on down there at about half four.

The first band/DJ came on at two and the thing finished at ten, and I'm guessing the Essex-Police-circa-1995 style heavy-handed tactics meant that people who were indulging in naughties necked them just before they rocked up to the gates, so that by the time we got there they were all having a rare old time. Rather than me, who just felt very old! Most of the punters were kids, which was fair enough, but there were quite a few folk our age and older, and looking at them mushed off their chops and giving it the large gave me the right fear. This remember, is all in blazing sunshine and 80 degree heat.

The 'Trap were very good, though they've only got one album so it was over fairly sharp. Then we walked into the Cross and went to the Darlo Bar, and then the Green Park Hotel as the Darlo shuts at midnight but the Green Park's open until two. By that time we were in quite an advanced state of refreshment so it was only natural I then got myself home. And sat up until four watching Birmingham beat Chelsea, about which I can remember very little.

A Sproston Green Design For Life

The last week was a big one in terms of entertainment, especially for 30-something expat Brits in Australia.

Last Thursday it was The Charlatans, and on Monday just there it was The Manic Street Preachers, both playing the same venue, The Metro.

There's a lad who must have similar taste in music and be a youtube buff as, like with Ashcroft in August, he's bunged up videos of various songs from the gigs, which is nice of him. He must have been standing near me at The Charlies as the view on this video is pretty much the same one I had:



It wasn't sold out and like Ashcroft, there were tickets going for less than half price outside, but the upside was that you could easily get a decent standing position down the front. By the time they played Sproston Green I was seven beers in and not in a mood to mess about - the intro built everyone into a frenzy and when it kicked in me and the lad I was with leaped forward and joined the melee of about fifty mid-30s lads going properly potty, jumping about and shouting our heads off like it was the mid-90s. Much like Dan and Danny at Rage Against The Machine, it's been a few years since I emerged from a gig soaked in sweat and buzzing, so it was only natural that we went straight from venue to pub for another four beers. I eventually got in about half one, properly gattered. Work the next day was bliss.


The Manics was sold out, all the tickets went in double quick time. I didn't exactly know why until about two songs in when James Dean bradfield told the crowd it'd been over ten years since they were last here, meaning the last time they played Sydney, Mick was there! Madness.



It was on a Monday, which is the seventh best day of the week for going to see a gig, but it was a cracker nonetheless and I was once again able to stand down the front and off to the side without too much hassle. I like the new album (thank you DD) and they played the greatest hits to a crowd who were well up for it. They're also one of the tightest live bands I've seen.

The setlist for the Charlatans is here, and for The Manics here. If you put "Charlatans/Manic Street Preachers Sydney Metro" into Youtube you'll get a few more videos an'all.

Going to gigs is brilliant innit? I had a proper good time as these two and none of you lot were even there!

Dave 'Bruce Wayne' Dumville

The double life of the man from the Mail. There's a brief glimpse one minute forty five seconds in, and then from two minutes fifteen seconds the secret identity is fully revealed as the man we previously knew as an England supporter goes proper loopy. And to think I sat in your house watching England vs Scotland at Euro '96, copping it large from you and your old man as Gazza scored that goal and (prompting an even bigger celebration from you...) Seaman saved that penalty.

As this was BBC Scotland, there's also some of the best commentary you'll ever hear in your life, the Jock version of "Your boys took one hell of a beating", except this time it was a team saving their reputations from taking a hell of a beating, saving themselves from being forever remembered as being unable to beat a team from a country whose population is smaller than the capacity of the ground the game took place in.

MD32

Happy birthday Max! Apologies for the lateness - camera issues and then waiting for a suitable event. As it turned out, a 'suitable event' turned into what's being described as one of the greatest ever finals play-offs, and like Gillingham in 1999 against Many City (as opposed to the year later against Wigan) it didn't turn out well.

There are match reports here and here, but as is the case with these things, reading it doesn't do the game nearly enough justice. The Tigers finished the regular season 3rd and the top eight teams go into a properly convoluted finals system called the McIntyre Final Eight System, that meant they played the team who finished sixth, which was the Sydney Roosters, who are the team of the Eastern Suburbs (where I live), who loads of people hate as they're seen as a bit of a Chelsea, coming from a posher area with a higher percentage of 'what what what' casual fans, as opposed to the West Sydney teams who are 'working class man-of-the-people clubs'.

Tigers should have won the game by about twenty points but they're famous for self-destructing and they pissed it away in legendary style last night, letting the Roosters equalise with zero time remaining on the clock after only needing to run down the clock with six tackles and thirty seconds left, and then after twenty minutes of golden point extra time made a horrible pass mistake which was intercepted and run home for the win, after about three solid chances where they should have won it themselves. Properly end-to-end, tearing your hair out, "it's the hope that kills you" stuff that left Tigers fans stunned and Roosters fans going mental.

There's no segregation at games here and there were a few Roosters fans near me that were giving it the big one and were on the verge of getting killed by loads of pissed up Tigers fans, coppers were lurking about near them. We were in the area that was designated as the Tigers home end, but it's a voluntary scheme and you can sit where you like. I was cracking up, 'cause if it had been in the UK there would have been about four folk beaten to death by angry mobs just in the area where I was sitting.

This round is the 'qualifying finals' - two teams go out, two get a bye, and the other four go into the semis, two go through from this round to play the two who got byes, and the winners of that round play in the Grand Final. If the Tigers had won they'd have got a bye to the semis as the Panthers, who finished above them in second, lost to the Canberra Raiders. As it is The Dragons, who finished top, need to beat the Manly Sea Eagles (who finished eighth) otherwise it's the Tigers who go out this round along with the Warriors, who finished in the bottom half of the draw and then lost to Gold Coast Titans, so they don't get another life. If Dragons beat Manly then the Tigers will play Canberra in the next round. Whilst there's no chance the Dragons can go out even if they lose, a win will see them get a bye so obviously the incentive to win is there, though arguably not as much as Manly as it's straight knock out for them.


Update: The Dragons wiped the floor with the Eagles, so the Tigers play the Raiders in Canberra next week.