I’m loving the video to the song from that Ipod Nano advert (Feist - “1234″).
It’s pretty cool and shot all in one take:
…and the “making of” video if your interested. Quite nice how they do the beginning and end without any camera trickery:
I know what you’re thinking. “Not another fookin’ Level 42 post”. So apologies in advance! It’ll be the last one for a while, promise.
The Cambridge gig was a few weeks ago. Next stop for us on the tour was a well known hot bed of musical action. That’s right, it could only be… Basingstoke.
We decided to sit through the support act, Kenny Thomas, this time. It wasn’t until his penultimate song that I actually realised who the hell he was. He’d had a cheesy hit in the 90’s with “Thinking About Your Love“. You’d probably know it if you heard it. Faaaascinating, eh.
Level 42 though were blindin’. They sounded much better than the previous gig in Cambridge, but they’d tweaked the setlist ever so slightly.
Probably about two thirds into the gig, a blonde, extremely fit photographer brushed past me and ran down the steps towards the stage (just a few rows in front of me), to take pictures of the band in action. It wasn’t long before she turned her camera onto the crowd for a few more snaps. I couldn’t help think she looked familiar…
Anyway, I think it was perhaps one of the best L42 gigs that I’ve been to. I even got a very limp handshake from Mike Lindup at the end. Bonus!
As we were leaving… who should be making a speedy exit through the stage door? Only “Thunderthumbs” himself, Mark King. He had time for a quick handshake, but alas no photo. Doh!
He was followed shortly after by Sean Freeman, Gary Husband, Mike Lindup and Nathan King. But wait! Who was that with Nathan? Oooooh, he’s with that photographer! It’s only Helen Chamberlain! (of Soccer AM on Sky One fame). *schwing*
Ok, well you probably have no idea who she is, but I was impressed even if you’re not. She looked straight at me and said “I was taking pictures of you!!!”. That’s right: Helen Chamberlain was taking pictures of me. Ooooooh yes. Get me mingling with the stars again and appearing in their photo albums. She was absolutely stunning in real life and a very friendly lady… she even posed for a photo too.
Told you she was fit… Get in!!
*Update* Just realised I’ve been blogging for a year today! Never thought I’d keep it up… oooooh matron, although my sage like prediction is pretty true!
With one thing and another, I’ve not had time to post about the Cambridge Level 42 gig on their current tour. It was actually a couple of weeks ago now, but we had seats on the front row, in the very centre, so it was bound to be a good evening…
Well I say “album review”, but you know what I mean. Like I ever review anything thoroughly.
Professional music critics always use bollocks descriptive words like “organic” and then typically shoehorn music into a genre. If they can’t find one, they’ll make a new one up. Neoclassical-electro-punk-funk etc. I think it probably makes them able to sleep at night knowing that everything has been safely pigeonholed.
Anyway, yesterday I got my copy of the new Level 42 album - Retroglide, slightly ahead of the official release date (which is nice). It’s been about 12 years since Forever Now was released, so it’s been a long wait for us L42 fans.
Over the last month or so, the official site has been putting 45 second snippets online. I wasn’t overly impressed! Was buying tickets to two dates of the Retroglide tour a big mistake?
Hmm let’s see, after a few listens, here’s what I’ve got so far. The tracks standing out for me are The Way Back Home, Just For You and Sleep Talking (conveniently sequential tracks), whereas Clouds, Ship and All I Need strike me as flat bland fillers. I’m hoping Clouds will grow on me though in the same way a previous L42 song - It’s Over did.
Overall, I’d say this is a very organic, mature acid jazz album with shades of mellow retrofunk. Arrrrrrrrgh!!! I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Actually, I’ll quote the great music guru that is Louis Walsh… “I liked it!”. I don’t think it’s going to be a classic L42 album by any means and it’s a shame I don’t instantly love it, but at least I’m looking forward to the live gigs again now.
Oh, If you’re particularly curious about the music from the previous Russian Lefortovo Tunnel crash post it’s by Juliet and the track is called Avalon.
I’ve read a few posts about the story behind these tunnel crashes by the way. From what I can make out, the Lefortovo tunnel is one of the world’s longest tunnels. It’s also supposed to be quite a leaky and seems to get quite icy during the winter. Not sure if I believe that though… all the other cars seem to stop quite easily.
