While looking through a box of various stuff rescued from my mother’s attic, i came across three flyers for the now long and sadly defunct Aberdeen techno club;Trauma.
I spent many a night attending many memorable club and party nights up in sunny Aberdeen with the mad for it Trauma crew,seeing acts like EgeBamYasi,Tobias Schmidt,Steve Glencross,David Holmes Evil Eddie Richards,Twitch of Pure and Optimo fame.
For anyone else who remembers some great nights and good people….

A somewhat truncated set from the king of Hobo-Blues,the master of Jakey-Jive,indeed,the very definitely bearded villian of Tramp-Rock,Seasick Steve
Something i have never understood about this guy,is that somehow a lot of people think his name is Sea Sick Steve and not the less retarded and more obviously natural Seasick Steve, as it undoubtedly should be.If you are indeed one of these people,then don’t download this.
I should point out that this is from Last years Reading Festival.

First up is a minimix from the bearded half(damn,wrong again) of Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip.Quite a funky little number.
Second is a techno mix from the mighty Surgeon.What i love about Surgeon’s mixes is how he isn’t afraid to throw in a few oldies here and there,too many dj’s play the newest thing,forgetting that a good old track is very often still a good track.

Lux Interior,lead singer and co-founder of The Cramps passed away in the early hours of February fourth, 2009.
The music world has lost an amazingly unique performer,someone who,onstage at least, could make Iggy look like a catholic school choirboy.Lux was the sort of man who made you feel like dedicating your life to rock and roll and i doubt if we will ever see anyone quite like him again.
As talked about in a previous post,i was lucky enough to see the band live in the mid Eighties,Lux had an massive onstage presence,perhaps the greatest onstage persona that i have ever seen ,he’s right up there with Iggy and Marilyn Manson in terms of showmanship.
Here’s a vid from the same time as i saw them,Lux even has exactly the same outfit on

And lastly,if you know how Lux got his stage name, then i’m sure you will agree that Lux would have apprecieted the irony of this

It rocks!Downloaded the demo for the PS3 the other day and it looks and feels superb.Very much carrying on directly from Res 4 in feel,it features the same over-the-shoulder playing view.The graphics are excellent,particularly light effects and the gameplay fast and furious.Enemies are in places very numerous and very fast,some carry melee style weapons.
Somewhat like Res 4,you have a partner in this game,but she’s not limited to just following you around,she’s well handy with weapons,and you can exchange items with her.When you pick an item up you are given the option to keep it for yourself or give it to her to use,when you run out of ammo,she will run over and offer you some if she has it,it’s an excellent touch and it shouldnt surprise you to learn that there is a split screen co-op mode.Also the mini-game,The Mercanaries, makes a welcome return.
The main character needs no introduction to Res fans,it’s Chris Redfield,who hasn’t been in the series since the first game.There is about ten years of game-time difference between the first game and this one,so much of Res 5 is taken up with exploring what Chris has been doing in that period of time.
As for the accusations of racism that the game has faced,i find it a little bizarre….a zombie game set in Africa would surely have black zombies,it would be perhaps justifiable to call the game racist if it was set in Africa and did not have any African zombies.The last game was set in Spain,but i didnt hear any of the same accusations about that one,and it’s not as if there have not been black zombies in previous games,the only differences are that this game is set in Africa , there are hordes of black zombies,and that the virus originated there.Perhaps thats the real bugbear for some people,maybe they make a connection between Aids and the T-Virus,i don’t know,it’s a game,if i enjoy it then i’ll play it
Check the Official site for screenshots,trailers and various downloads,or download the demo from the Playstion Network for your PS3

Richard ‘Rick’ Wright,keyboard player and occasional vocalist for Pink Floyd died yesterday.
Think i’ll go and watch Live At Pompeii.

Well,we went to see it last week,just been too busy to write anything.

It’s pretty damn good,and well worth the effort of seeing on a big screen.Perlman is superb,and i was surprised at how good that guy from the dismally crap Eighties band ,Bros was.Obviously i use the term ‘band’ in the loosest possible sense and by ‘dismally’ i mean downright awful with a deep and abiding hatred at the very thought of his being.The chance of a successful transition from popstar to credible actor is not a good one,given past efforts.Having said that,under 18 inches of makeup,he is almost unrecognisable.He must have trained bloody hard for the role,so you gotta give him that.Same for Perlman,can’t be that easy dodging around film sets under a good few pounds of prosthetics and makeup at his age.

The creatures are little short of awesome,i think i read somewhere there were less than half a dozen creatures in the first Hellboy film,in this one there are loads,each quite distinctive and some really spectacular and original.Everything is just so much more scaled up compared to the first film.Although i still think the first one is the better movie.

This is one of my most loved records,a mad Space Rock concept album conceived and written by one time Hawkwind frontman Bob Calvert,and performed by various members of Hawkwind and The Pink Fairies with contributions from Brian Eno, ex Bonzo Vivian Stanshall,Adrian Wagner and the crazy,crazy Arthur Brown.
The basis of the story of Captain Lockheed is the botched sale of a large number of Lockheed F104 Starfighters to Germany.In the German Air Force,Starfighters had an appalling safety record,the second worst in the history of aircraft,loosing more than 200 aircraft with over 100 pilot deaths.Generally this is blamed on several reasons…
Lockheed mis-sold the plane to Germany,the Starfighter was developed as a fair-weather fighter,Germany wanted an aircraft for heavy duty fighter roles including use as an atomic bomber.So Lockheed made some hasty modifications to the design,without proper testing,to push the sale through.
The aircraft itself was very difficult to fly,even for an experienced pilot,it could become unstable at high angles of attack,was over sensitive to control inputs and very unforgiving of pilot error.
Pilot and ground crew training was also an issue,German pilots were trained in the deserts of the US,a very different landscape from that of Germany.Many German ground crew had never worked on a jet aircraft and had to be retrained to do so,unfortunately,quite minimally.
The album itself is a mixture of Hawkwind style driving Space Rock and Monty Pythonesque searingly satirical comic sketches.A sputtering plane engine starts things off as The German Defence Minister,played by Calvert,builds up a rant about remodernising the German Air Force to messianic pitch and then were off into the first of the tunes,Aerospaceage Inferno,this goes directly into perhaps the funniest of the sketches in which a Lockheed salesman clinches the sale by promising to change the name of the aircraft to the F104 G…”G for Germany”.This is followed by The Widow Maker,classic Hawkwind rock.Two test Pilots chatting about the aircrafts’ performance is next up,linked into another classic tune,The Right Stuff.Side one ends with the first of two Arthur Brown vocal contributions,Song Of The Gremlin is a standout track,Brown is like a man possessed as he takes on the character of The Gremlin,ranting over an almost Techno soundtrack.

Side two opens with a hilarious skit involving two aircrew discussing  a loose part they have found inside the engine of the aircraft.The folk rock of Hero With A Wing follows as Calvert, perhaps wistfully imagines himself as an Icarus figure,this links into maybe my fave skit,in which Ground Control are talking a pilot through what drugs to take before flying.The Prog/Punk of Ejection follows,with a classic Hawkwind/Brock repeating rhyme scheme.The longest sketch on the album follows,an interview for the post of Starfighter Pilot is blackly twisted into something quite perverse,Arthur Brown’s second contribution is next as he reprises the Gremlin song,then the album is pretty much wound up with a tiny skit..
Sounds of singing,glasses clinking
Voice of German Youth:”Do you want to buy a Starfighter?”
Silence
“Then buy an acre of ground……..and wait”
You can find a rough transcript of the album on Starfarer’s site,it’s interesting to note one of Starfarer’s asides on how he mentioned the album to an RAF officer who had been based in Germany,the RAF guy was well aware of the album,but said it was considered a piss take of their German counterparts and no more than that.The satire was totally wasted on our Forces apparently.
Buy it

There are certain songs i get stuck in my head,sometimes for days at a time,some repeat time and time again.
Men Without Hats one hit wonder Safety Dance is one such tune.Nothing i do can shift them until they are replaced with another

I have often thought that this tune is somehow a precursor to Dance/Rave culture,partly because of the lyrical content,but also because of the video..an idealised view of a bucolic England….Crusties must watch this and think it looks like Crusty Heaven.

A small footnote for trivia fans…if the video was better quality you might recognise Mike Edmonds,who played Og in Time Bandits.

Ron Perlman as Hellboy

I am so going to see this on the big screen,can’t wait.

I want to see this for many reasons,

1:It’s Hellboy II!

2:It’s Hellboy II

3:Its got Ron Perlman in it,the man is a superb actor.

4 :Its a Guillermo del Toro film,the man is a genius.

Does four reasons count as ‘many’?…it does in my book,even if there are only three.
If your a stranger to either Del Toro or Perlman,you should have a look at some of their films..Perlman is one of my favourite actors,he’s brilliant in the much maligned Alien Resurrection and in the dreamlike City Of Lost Children directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.
Del Toro directed the equally dreamlike and multi-layered Pan’s Labyrinth,the first Hellboy movie and Blade II.
If you visit the Official Site,there’s trailers to watch,downloads etc etc