Posts Tagged ‘sheffield’

Mark Knopfler is an amazing guitarist and it was his work shredding the licks in Dire Straits that inspired me to pick up the guitar. So I was quite excited when he announced he would be touring with his band, including a stop in Sheffield.

We were in Nottingham in the morning, and I had training, so we had to drive all the way back to Leeds and then drive right back down the M1 to the gig that evening. We did get lucky though – I assumed there would be a support band on, so I didn’t set off until 6:40. Turns out he did start at 7:30, but due to sheer luck we got straight down the motorway and into the car park, ending up right next to the entrance and got in just as the lights went down.

Critics might say that the two hours and fifteen minutes they played for was fifteen minutes short of The Who. Lazy even. But I was pretty happy with the length!

He played Sultans of Wing, Romeo & Juliet, Telegraph Road and So Far Away, as well as a load of new stuff. He actually has more new stuff that I have actually listened to, as I only recognised one or two of his solo tunes even though I thought I had listened to most of it. His new stuff is so-so. It’s good, but it’s little guitar riffs, and doesn’t show off his skills as much as when he does a full song like Sultans or Telegraph Road.

I have never seen someone change guitars as much a Mark. It’s odd because in Guitar Stories he said he got the Pentair made because he didn’t want the hassle of switching between his Strat and his Les Paul. Yet in the gig he switched guitars every song, and in many songs, in the middle of the song as well!

Last weekend, we went down to Corporation in Sheffield to attend the Alternative & Burlesque Fair.

Was it worth it? No. To be honest, I found it so disappointing that I’m not sure I would have even gone to it even if it had been in Leeds, if I had known what it was like.

I don’t think the stalls were are numerous as I was lead to believe and there was nothing particularly interesting there. There were also some stage shows, but the one we saw was just a burlesque dance. That’s probably expected given the name, but the reality of it is that it is just stripping out of slightly fancier clothing.

At £5 to get in, it is not worth a visit in my opinion.

What a climatic ending we got for the final game of the season. The Rams needed to win to make the play-offs but all was looking pretty grim at half time when they found themselves 22-0 down.

However, a spectacular reversal in the second half brought them back to 22-20, with only a few minutes left and the ball on the half way line when they were given a 15 yard penalty against the defence. It was like a replay of Super Bowl XLVII from earlier this year.

Sadly, just like the Super Bowl, the defence held, though due more to a valiant effort of the Predators than the clear pass interference of the Baltimore Ravens.

Last week, Sheffield Skeptics invited me down to present a talk on Ray Kurzweil, and his book The Singularity is Near.

I’ve been to the group before to see Richard Wiseman speaking and they’re a really nice group. They’ve now become so popular that they’ve taken over the main bar at their arena and have a great projector setup and sound system.

The talk went quite well from the feedback I gathered, I took out a lot of the more technical site that was originally in the talk when I delivered it to Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub in July, so I think I’ve got it about the right level between factual and not too technical now.

The other day I was catching up with one of my friends who was in Leeds for the weekend. I fancied a drink so I went into the McDonald’s on Briggate and ordered a medium coke.

We went just outside the restaurant and continued chatting, while I was drinking my coke, though after about half the cup, I had had enough, so I gave the rest to my friend.

As he started to drink, the restaurant manager came running out of the restaurant and yelled “what do you think you are doing? If you want a drink, you have to buy your own! You can’t have the rest of his!”

That story isn’t true.

Of course it isn’t true, that would be mental. And yet, when I parked up in a car park in Sheffield city centre last week, I was asked for my car’s registration number, to make sure that I couldn’t pass the parking ticket on to anyone else.

In other words, Sheffield City Council were deliberately preventing me from passing on parking time, which I had already paid for, and of which they offered no refund for the time I didn’t use, to someone else. But how is that any different to sharing a coke?

On Thursday, we headed down to Sheffield to see Paramore. The wind and the rain made for an interesting journey, but never the less we made it down in good time and after grabbing some food we headed in just to see the final few songs of B.o.B.

Paramore themselves hit the stage at around 9:15 and played an almost identical set list to the one they had played in Nottingham a few days earlier, which was great, because those were the songs I had been listening to non-stop since 😀 .

I really enjoyed the gig, probably more than Linkin Park, mainly due to us having standing tickets which was well worth the premium cost as you get so much more atmosphere on the floor – not to mention more room to get into the rhythm.