Back to the castle for our third gig of the summer

Yesterday we went back to Cardiff Castle for the second time in less than a fortnight, this time to see Bowling for Soup and Frank Turner on their joint 'Bowling for Bones' tour. There was additional support from American Hi-Fi. We arrived in time to see all three bands perform.

We had 'accessible' tickets this time so were on a raised area with seating some way off to the left of the stage. It meant we were near the castle keep.

Although being in the accessible area was helpful for Cathy, it was a lot colder than the previous gig we went to at the castle. And being on a raised platform meant the area was quite exposed. Cathy ended up putting on extra layers. It was quite a contrast to when we saw Garbage on the brink of a heatwave!

All the layers - including rain poncho!

American Hi-Fi were decent. They have a very early noughties pop-punk sound. I enjoyed their set. 

Frank Turner's set list included most of his faster, louder songs. He started with I Still Believe and played most of my favourite songs, finishing with Get Better. 

There were a couple of slower songs in the middle, like Wessex Boy, which he introduced with an apology for being from Southern England. He had previously expressed a love for playing in Cardiff and name-checked Clwb Ifor Bach as a "legendary" venue, that he had performed in very early in his career. 

Frank concluded his set by saying he had met a bunch of American tourists in the castle earlier who said they were in a band and so he had invited them to perform a set. He asked the crowd to stay for at least two songs. 

And then Bowling for Soup came on for the kind of mayhem they tend to bring to the stage. There are only two band members left from when we saw them play the Student's Union Great Hall 20 years ago, but we still got the full gamut of classics like Almost, High School Never Ends, Ohio, Girl All the Bad Guys Want, The Bitch Song and 1985. They also introduced their "most popular song" early in the set and played the theme song to Phineas and Ferb. 

I particularly liked their Cymraeg rebrand!

Music aside, there were lengthy, sweary, funny rambles in between songs, an on-stage giveaway of a signed guitar, a dragon, pyrotechnics and flame projectors. It was non-stop entertainment.

This was our third big gig in less than two weeks. It's been a hectic time but great that so many artists we like are coming to Cardiff making it easy for us to see them.

2011 – year in review

I did this last year and found it fun, so here’s a look backward at 2011.

January

I was recruited to write an end-of-session report for a Commission that ended up a few weeks later with having lunch in the then Health Minister’s office in Cardiff Bay. I also had a wisdom tooth out and had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic that laid me up crook for most of a week.

February

I spent most of the month working on the report for the Commission, interspersed with a family wedding in Bournemouth, which included drink in a remarkable Victorian booze-house. I branched out onto a new social media platform and joined Twitter. One aspect of my migration to Twitter is my daily use of Facebook dropping to weekly, or even longer, between visits. As someone (can’t remember who) said, “Facebook feels so 2008”.

March

Went to an odd gig – Boothby Graffoe at Chapter Arts Centre. He was filming a DVD and that meant occasionally he’d be asked to repeat stuff if the cameramen hadn’t quite got the shot they wanted. He had to make his entrance several times. At that point I knew it was going to be a long night. I also went to my 22nd Wales football game at the Millennium Stadium. They lost, to England, 2-0.

April

Did my second ‘in the News’ studio slot at UCB Radio on April 1 and then went to a football match on my birthday – love it when that happens, especially as Town won 4-1. Had two round trips to Newcastle to see a poorly sister-in-law later in the month and ended up driving home on Royal Wedding Day.

May

Marked my first-year anniversary at the job I still sometimes think of as my ‘new’ job. A couple of weeks after that I got to travel to the exotic city of Birmingham for a conference. Spent the end of the month driving round Wales filming people – including my first ever visit to Llanidloes. Shrewsbury Town bodged the play-offs and stayed in League 2.

June

Summer holiday in Mull and then on the Ardnamurchan peninsular. I preferred Mull. Ardnamurchan was the wrong kind of remote for me, although the Lighthouse was cool. I also enjoyed eating lunch next to Loch Morar and wondering if Nessie’s cousin Morag would appear. (She didn’t.) On the 24th I became Uncle Jon to Joy Lindsay Matthias.

July

Bit of a weird month in work. One of my line managers was overseas the entire month, although I was left with plenty to get on with! Outside of work I restarted building a model railway. Updates have been infrequent of late as I have barely had time to work on the project, let alone blog about it.

August

Mum and Dad came down for a couple of days and we went to Cardiff Castle for the first time. It only took living here 16 years...

September

I travelled to the Emirates Stadium and saw Shrewsbury Town take the lead against Arsenal before eventually losing 3-1. A great occasion, though, despite the result. And then we had a week with my family in rural Herefordshire.

October

I seemed to spend most of October either on the road filming or editing the masses of footage we accumulated all over Wales. I also had another live morning in the studio at UCB and ended the month with a disappointing trip to see Shrewsbury play AFC Wimbledon, the only upside of which was introducing a new person to the ‘joys’ of watching Shrewsbury Town. Went to a Bowling for Soup gig that I felt was disappointing, but really liked one of the support bands, Suburban Legends. Bought their CD and have played it repeatedly since.

November

My second Town ‘away’ match of the season, but the shortest trip I’ll make to see them for a while as they played Newport County in the cup. So far I’ve seen at least one match a month this season – the streak continued into December as well. Work-wise, we had two massive events on consecutive days and then later in the month I got to go to The Guardian offices for a conference.

December

Always a busy month, particularly with all the travelling we tend to do to see family at Christmas and all the friends we only seem to catch up with at Christmas. (We started Christmas Day in Cardiff and ended up with my folks in Shrewsbury having eaten Christmas dinner with Cathy’s folks near Gloucester.) For the first time since 2002 I went into work between Christmas and New Year. It was a bit strange.

Name checking

Further to yesterday's post about their genius song lyric, Scouting for Girls' latest single is called Elvis Ain't Dead, which got me thinking about songs that namecheck other bands or artists.

Ironically Scouting for Girls are in direct competition with Living Colour, who released a track called Elvis is Dead back in the 90s. REM claimed "Andy's goofing on Elvis, hey baby" on Man on the Moon, and Counting Crows sang "she wants to meet a boy who looks like Elvis" on Round Here.

In fact the Crows are notable namecheckers. Two other examples spring to mind: "I wanna be Bob Dylan" (Mr Jones) and "Got Ben Folds on the radio" (Monkey). Then there's Snow Patrol urging a girl to "put Sufjan Stevens on" (Hands Open), and Bowling for Soup namechecking Nirvana, Blondie, U2, Madonna and probably loads more in 1985.

When it comes to names in titles, 'Roll Over Beethoven' springs to mind (originally By Chuck Berry but made famous by The Beatles), while currently I'm loving The Wombats tune 'Let's Dance to Joy Division'. And of course there's the classic Ballad of Tom Jones by Space & Cerys Matthews.

There's probably loads more if I really thought about it - any ideas?

Quiz answers

To appease Ab who has been cursing me for putting on a quiz, and to illuminate everyone else, here are the answers to last week's music quiz.

"Lay back, head in the grass; chewing gum, having some laughs; yeah, we were having some laughs" Sterophonics: Dakota (specifically the live version off the Live from Dakota album. If you ever doubted the 'Phonics were Welsh, listen to the way they introduce this...]

"I'll die when I'm done..."
Gnarls Barkly: Crazy

"under your skin feels like home; electric touch on aching bone"
Snow Patrol: You're All I Have

"still care about your hair and the car you drive; doesn't matter if you're sixteen or thirty-five"
demigods of rock Bowling for Soup: High School Never Ends

"ambition got cast aside; thrown away when the batteries died"
more Welshies with The Automatic: Raoul

"don't stop and don't look back, uh huh; 'cos your love's like a heart attack, c'mon"
Supergrass: Kiss of Life

"I never really gave up on breaking out of this 2 star town"
Killers: single of the moment, Read My Mind

"I'm sick of working all week for people I cannot stand"
Even more Welshies, Lost Prophets: Everybody's Screaming!!! (possibly the only song with three exclamation marks in the title?)

"there's no profit in ever being right, we gotta fight some more"
Ocean Colour Scene: Profit in Peace

"kill all the fags who don't agree"
Green Day: Holiday, from the awesome American Idiot album

"dance if you wanna dance; please, brother, take a chance"
Oasis: The Masterplan

Bowling for Soup

BFS are hitting the big time. When we saw them 14 months or so ago, their support acts were absolute rubbish. This time round they were Wheatus (of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ fame) and Son of Dork (of ‘one of the guys used to be in Busted’ fame), and some other band I’d never heard of, and missed seeing because we were late to the gig.

But we’d only really gone to see the Soup and they didn’t disappoint. They started with their anthem about growing up in a hometown, ran through some of their better back-catalogue and a couple of songs from their new album. I pogoed/shouted along to Come Back to Texas, 1985, Almost and Girl All the Bad Guys Want as well as my favourite – introduced as a song about Eric’s mom – The Bitch Song. The new stuff sounds not unlike the old stuff, and High School Never Ends is very catchy.

But the strength of a BFS gig is in the interaction between the band and the crowd, and even the band and each other. Stopping mid-song for beverage breaks and "the official BFS photo opportunity" posing time, is humorous and makes it worth going to a gig, unlike bands that just seem to want to play the same songs again and again in identikit concerts. The important point is that BFS seem to have as much fun onstage as the moshers offstage, which makes the gig fun to be a part of.

And any lead singer who launches into a rambling story about how he’s been warned not to call Welsh audiences sheep f***ers and then shouts "Good evening sheep f***ers!" has got to be a rock and roll hero.

[A big thank you to Sarah Mac who bought us the tickets for Christmas. You rock!]

Spoiled by living in a city

Every time I go back to Shrubbery I'm reminded of the Bowling for Soup song 'My Hometown'. Maybe it's because of the chorus, which goes like this:

"I hope this song finds you well
And I hope that you're doing f***in swell
I hope that you're back up
'Cos I know you've been down
And I hope you get the f*** out of my hometown!"

On that punk rock note: Happy Birthday Dave.

Covers

You know sometimes how you hear a song covered and you think – actually that’s pretty good. Then you hear Girl’s Aloud doing Tiffany and (worrisome mental image aside) you think – ‘No, covers should be banned’.

Somewhere along the line a line has to be drawn between good covers and bad covers. On the bad side there’s anything by Westlife, ‘Tragedy’ by Steps (never has a song been worthier of its title) and every reality TV star who tries to step into pop stardom. Oh, and Marilyn Manson, who was annoying before he started strangling classics like Personal Jesus. And on the good side? Well, here are 7 examples of times when covering a song actually works.

#1 Terrorvision – The Passenger
The ‘Vision went through a phase of doing covers as b-sides to their singles. This doesn’t actually add much to the Iggy Pop original, but somehow sounds better.

#2 Garth Brooks – Shameless
The king of country music took Billy Joel’s album filler track and made it his own.

#3 Dandy Warhols – Hell’s Bells
This is on the b-side of the Vodafone ad song ‘Bohemian Like You’. By slowing down AC/DC’s rock track and pitching it to a creepy baseline they turned this into a genuinely dark track.

#4 Counting Crows – Friend of the Devil
Included on their ‘best of’, even though it’s a cover of a Grateful Dead song that was never released on an album. One of a large number of songs I like with the word ‘devil’ in the title. Others include ‘Devil’ by the Stereophonics and ‘Runnin’ with the Devil’ by Van Halen.

#5 Van Halen – Dancing in the Street
Speaking of Van Halen, in the early days when they were producing albums in rapid succession they included a whole host of covers, including ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘You Really Got Me’. This funked-up classic is the stand out one, though.

#6 either Rufus Wainwright or k.d.lang – Hallelujah
Rufus Wainwright covered this Leonard Cohen song for Shrek for the scene where Shrek and Princess Fiona go their separate ways – probably the most moving scene in an animated film. Then k.d.lang covered it on her album of Canadian songs and did it equal justice.

#7 Semisonic – The Air That I Breathe
A b-side to ‘Closing Time’ I think, but I’m not sure. Beautiful though, whichever single it was on.

And for the hard core fans of covers, a couple of bonus tracks...
Bonus track 1: Bowling for Soup – Summer of ‘69
It’s hard to take the Soup seriously, but then they don’t. A fun cover.
Bonus track 2: REM – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
So they released a single called The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite and some bright spark thought ‘let’s cover that Lion Sleeps Tonight’ song as a b-side’. Bizarre, but true, and incredibly funny to listen to. Michael Stipe at his warbley finest.