Re-form and reform

Thoughts on Werchter again… For me, one of the many* highlights was The Verve.

Recently, seemingly more than ever, it’s become the done thing for bands to re-form (and sometimes reform). Recent examples include: Ace of Base, Alice in Chains, All Saints, Atomic Kitten, Backstreet Boys, Genesis, Medadeth, The Police, Sex Pistols, Spice Girls and Stone Temple Pilots, to name a few. Worryingly, even Michael Jackson is said to be working on a new album, and I’ve seen his name on a poster of an upcoming festival…

That said, I was very impressed with The Verve’s performance. The old classics like Bittersweet Symphony, Sonnet, Lucky Man and The drugs don’t work were popular, but some of the most powerful stuff came from their upcoming album.

A personal favourite was the song “Sit and Wonder”, seen here at Coachella 2008:

It’s true that bands often sound better live than on a clinical recording, but let’s hope for the best!

*other amazing shows included The Chemical Brothers,
Neil Young, Radiohead, Sigur Rós, and even dEUS.

Moby killed my camera!

At Rock Werchter, on Friday 4 July 2008, a thin beam of intense green energy caused my 1-month old camera’s CCD sensor to have a stroke. Yes, dear readers, it’s true! Moby killed my camera. The high-powered(?) stage laser went straight into the lens, and – zap!

Here is what happened:

I thought cameras were designed to survive bright lights, but actions speak louder than words, and lasers shine brighter than than the brightest star.

Now, every picture I take with the camera looks exactly like this:

My camera now only sees this...

And now with a whacked camera, blasted ears and a stunned mind, I have also realised that this little blog has an existential crisis. In my opinion, successful blogs have a guiding theme or topic of interest – something this one has lacked thus far. That, and content. But now that will change… Over the coming weeks I’ll try to add more of the latter, so that the former might start to emerge. And I even made it a bit more pretty, by adding some eye candy to the to top bar… But then again, it’s only words, words, words.

Update: 15/07/2008

Indeed it seems as if things sometimes do go wrong at professional laser shows, as illuminated by the article in New Scientist entitled Party laser ‘blinds’ Russian ravers.
Ravers at the Aquamarine Open Air Festival in Kirzhach, 80 kilometres northeast of Moscow, began seeking medical help days after the show, complaining of eye and vision problems.

“They all have retinal burns, scarring is visible on them. Loss of vision in individual cases is as high as 80%, and regaining it is already impossible,” Kommersant quoted a treating ophthalmologist as saying.

Not cool.