Walking Leaf

I went to see one of the most famous metal rock band in the world, Metallica, at the former home of the Millennium Dome this month. The gig itself was simply spectacular with impressive fireworks, lighting effects and of course, the epic guitar solos from the band.

The O2 Arena itself was also amazing as I’ve never been to the Millennium Dome before. The sheer number of bars, shops and restaurants at the venue heavily distracted me. So much in fact, I’ve missed one of the support bands on stage! Not to worry of course, as I had a seat allocated for me.

In one particular bar, a special tournament was being held offering the chance to play the new Guitar Hero: Metallica video game. I didn’t have the opportunity to play the music rhythm game, as it was more fun watching the other people performing on stage to the ultra tricky Metallica songs!

As for the real deal, it was fantastic to see Metallica performing their greatest hits in front of thousands of enthusiastic Metallica fans. The atmosphere was electric and I loved every moment of it!

The highlight was Cyanide, The End of The Line, One, Master of Puppets and of course, the epic Enter Sandman.

After the two-hour performance, I was left feeling more. And thanks to this ace link on the official website, you can now download the complete set list. I would recommend the FLAC format for the true sounding experience!

My annual visit to Birmingham’s NEC to attend the Autosport International Show is often the highlight of the new year. As this is my opportunity to meet up with my good friends and see some racing cars/stars up close and personal.

The high point was of course was the F1 Racing stand and unique for this year, a special car display celebrating the past British Formula One world champions. From the likes of Jackie Stewart’s Tyrrell, James Hunt’s McLaren, to Nigel Mansell’s Williams and Lewis Hamilton’s 2008-spec McLaren. It’s amazing to see these cars all in the same area and it is fascinating how the advancement in technology and aerodynamics has changed the shape and look of the cars over the past five decades.

Another highlight was the David Coulthard stand, featuring a collection of the Scotsman race cars. Seeing DC’s little go-kart alongside his Formula Vauxhall and Williams-Renault is amazing and you have to wonder how much all these cars, race suits and helmets cost… I wasn’t surprised by the amount of extra security protecting the DC collection from the public.

Unlike my last visits, I wasn’t able to attend the Live Action Arena, as there was a mishap in purchasing the tickets. It didn’t matter anyway, as I spent this free time wandering around, taking photographs and asking for autographs from the racing stars.

This year’s Pistol Head performance car show was quite low-key. Instead of a large collection of exotic supercars, this year it was all about the BMW M3 and Porsche 911.

In fact, the whole Autosport show felt downscaled. The new layout didn’t help and after visiting the main attractions, you are left with little else to see… Which is a shame, as past events made this annual trip to the NEC worthwhile.

Still, at least I came away with some free stuff given out by those promo girls. So I shouldn’t complain too much!

Back in 2007, I went with a group of friends to see the Race of Champions at Wembley Stadium. The event was really entertaining as seeing the world’s best drivers from different disciplines of motor racing, competing in evenly matched cars, around a figure-of-eight circuit was a real highlight to the end of the year.

So for 2008, I invited some more friends who have yet to experience this sporting event and even though I purchased cheaper tickets online, the view from our seats was better than the year before!

From our seating position, you can see all of the track and with the competition so close, the atmosphere made the event felt more like a football match than a racing contest.

Just like last year, Team Germany won the Nations Cup thanks to the driving talent of seven times Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher and Grand Prix sensational Sebastian Vettel. In the main event, it was world rally champion Sebastien Loeb who took the honours, but the Frenchman had to fight hard against David Coulthard in the final.

The recently retiree Formula One racer was in a real competitive mood and it was quite surreal to see DC challenging the likes of Loeb, Schumacher and (Carl) Edwards, as previous years Coulthard would have been knocked out in the very first round…

In addition, DC managed to damage his race car throughout the night, including his Red Bull Racing Formula One car! During his demo run, the Scotsman performed a  ‘doughnut’ but as he was spinning around creating lots of smoke and noise for his fans, the car was slowly edging closer towards the wall…The inevitable happened and I still remember the crowd reaction when the front wing got knocked off against the barriers!

Speaking of demonstrations, the pre-event promotional was the ‘man versus machine’ challenge with British Olympic winner Chris Hoy racing his bike around the track against British Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton in his McLaren. Unfortunately, due to the icy track conditions the organisers decided to cancel the event and instead put Chris and Lewis in an open-top Mercedes and perform a parade lap in front of home crowd. It was a real shame, as I wanted to see this duel but Chris had the last laugh as later that evening, the Olympic hero was made BBC Sports Personality of the Year, beating his rival Hamilton!

So a great day out at Wembley and I was pleased to hear that my friends loved every moment of it. The on-track entertainment certainly kept our enthusiasm up despite the winter cold and we look forward to attend the next Race of Champions.

If you haven’t heard Alison Goldfrapp’s sensational singing voice, then here’s your opportunity to listen and download classic anthems for free – all thanks to The Guardian website.

The leading news website will feature a new track everyday for only this week to celebrate the release of the Seventh Tree Special Edition album, out on November 3rd.

I am a big fan of Goldfrapp. I’ve been to two live shows earlier this year and it was fantastic, in particular at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank.

Why do I like Goldfrapp? I just love the different music styles. From the ambient sound in Felt Mountain (Alison’s distinctive breathy, soft vocals and Will Gregory’s multi-layered synthesizer and string arrangements is simply spellbinding!), through to electronic music in Black Cherry to a more glam rock sound in Supernature, and most recently to a blend of ambient, folk, and electronic in Seventh Tree.

I was quite jealous of my work colleagues last week as they had tickets to see a one-off performance at Cecil Sharp House in Camden. The show was recorded as part of the BBC Electric Proms and you can see why I was envious by watching the video and observing the many photographs with this dedicate website.

Feeling left out in missing the event, I immediately booked some tickets after an email dropped into my Google inbox with the news that the band will be playing in Brixton Academy next month. I’ve never been to Brixton Academy before and have heard that this venue is the best place to see live acts.

Funny enough as I write this post, I just received my tickets for the show in the mail today (October 29th). And with that note, it’s time to celebrate with this awesome theme tune!

My recent trip to Germany was a real eye-opener. I never seen so many fascinating places of interest, with its rich history and heritage, plus the difference in culture between the British and German was deeply interesting. I’ve managed to get by the language barrier as many Germans can speak English, so that was particular useful when ordering food!

I always wanted to visit the country since my sister lives and work there. My parents went earlier this year but I was unable to go due to the amount of work I had to do… I have made amends by suggesting to my mates to tag along by visiting Berlin (the capital city of Germany), Aschaffenburg (my sister’s home town) and Munich (for the Oktoberfest).

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Picture: Andy Willsher

Last weekend, I went to Chelmsford (Essex) to attend the V Festival. I was feeling quite nervous that the wet British weather might spoil the event but in the end, it stayed dry with the sun just breaking out from the clouds.

The highlight of course was Muse. I still remember fondly the sell-out gig at Wembley last year and I was feeling pretty devastated when I missed out on the opportunity to see this fantastic band performing live at the Royal Albert Hall in London recently. (All the tickets were sold out within minutes!)

So I made amends by grabbing hold of those elusive V Festival tickets post-haste. I went for the Saturday only ticket but in hindsight, I should’ve gone for the weekend. That way, I get to see Muse performing twice!

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Two years ago, I attended a charity gig to see Goldfrapp performing at the majestic Royal Albert Hall and it was a stunning night. Fast-forward to this year and with the group’s latest album Seventh Tree doing well in the music charts, it was a great pleasure to experience the wonderful and cool sounds from the talented Alison Goldfrapp live in the Southbank.

Even though there was a problem with bad sound at the Royal Festival Hall, it was a fantastic night out to see Goldfrapp performing a range of great tracks close up – I had a great seat at the front row.

From the crowd favourite and clubbed-up powerhouse that is ‘Strict Machine’ to the sublime and provocative ‘Paper Bag’, Alison was on fine form entertaining the crowd with great enthusiasm. The highlight was of course ‘Happiness’ and each member of the audience was given a kazoo to play along!

Back in March 2007, I posted on my blog that I wasn’t that interested in the PlayStation 3 as it was too expensive and didn’t have that many games. Well, after a year of waiting for the price cut and a certain “real driving simulation”, I have finally purchased the new Sony game console.

Sure, it doesn’t support the backwards compatibility to play PlayStation 2 games like Okami, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but at least I didn’t have to pay over £400 to buy this advance machine. Okay, it has a smaller hard drive than the 60GB model – that can also play PS2 games – but I feel I made a wise choice in buying one as there are some decent quality titles coming out on this system in 2008.

The first of which is Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. It maybe a demo offering a slight glimpse of what the real game will be like with hundreds of car manufacturers, real race tracks from around the world and at last, damage mode – but the fact that this game showcase the potential of the PS3 with high definition visuals and sound means I am genuinely excited by this next gen video game console.

The PlayStation 3 uses the Blu-ray disc media that is now the definitive choice for high definition viewing – though I won’t be spending my cash on purchasing the same films to have a rich and nice display.

I believe Konami’s tactical espionage action game that is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of Patriots will be the biggest hit for the PS3. From scanning those stunning screenshots and digesting every bit of information about Hideo Kojima’s stealth-based video game, I am genuine excited to play it.

For the time being, I will make do with the racing games I got for the system with the likes of Formula One Championship Edition and MotorStorm to fulfil my need for speed.

A new year means another visit to the Birmingham’s NEC for the annual trip to the biggest motor racing show, the Autosport International.

The main highlight was the 50th anniversary of the British Touring Car Championship. Seeing the many ‘tin top’ racing cars up close was a real treat, especially the dominate Vauxhalls of the late 90s but I was slightly disappointed not to see the sinister black Ford Sierra that dominate the series in the mid 80s.

Another high point was the Colin McRae tribute stand, featuring an impressive collection of rally cars. Observing all these vehicles that the 1995 World Rally Champion drove throughout his career was highly emotional and it is still a shock that the popular Scot is no longer with us.

The Live Action Arena was extended with more racing action from the likes of Formula Palmer Audis, stockcars and new to the show, dragsters. These straight-line accelerating monsters sounded great in particular the 1953 Studebaker. I was amazed how much tire smoke it produces as the whole arena vibrated to its powerful engine (not to mention going deaf)!

As for the Formula One grid, it was fascinating to see the 2007 single-seater cars up close and personal. The chrome McLaren is simply gorgeous while the ‘earth’ theme Honda didn’t… This year’s Autosport International also included an extra feature, the Pistol Head performance car show and to be honest, I wasn’t a fan, Sure it was nice to see exotic supercars from the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche, but it felt like I stepped into Max Power world… And it didn’t help that the promo girls were wearing less (on second thoughts, that’s a good thing!).

At the end of an exhausting and long day, we left with a range of photographs stored on our digital cameras and fantastic memories of racing cars and stars.

After playing both version of Guitar Hero II on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 to death, it’s nice to experience a new set list of rockin’ tracks with the latest instalment of the popular music rhythm game.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has been developed by Neversoft after Activision decided to focus its attention on creating a brand new music game – the quite superb Rock Band (which is currently available in the States). Even though the game play to Guitar Hero III is identical to the previous titles, it some how feels different…

Yes, you still need to play through the different tracks by pressing the five colour fret buttons with the unique guitar controller but new to Guitar Hero III is the boss battle mode. To be honest, I really despise this new game play element as the balance between winning and losing is so random…

Okay its great to face-off legendary guitarists like Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave), Slash (of Guns N’ Roses/Slash’s Snakepit/Velvet Revolver) and Bret Michaels (of Poison) but you have to rely on sheer good fortune to take victory.

To defeat your opponent, you will need to pick up Battle Power (which replaces Star Power) to earn attacks. By using this special ability, you can strike against your fellow competitor just by tilting the guitar upwards. It may seem fun to keep on attacking but they can fight back – causing missed notes, increase in difficulty and even amp overload!

As for the visuals, the set designs and animation of the band members feels more realistic. In fact the lip sync on the singer matches the voices coming out of his mouth!

The track listing is now full of master recording from the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Smashing Pumpkins, Muse, Metallica and The Sex Pistols. It all sounds fantastic, a massive improvement over the cover versions that were featured in the previous Guitar Heroes.

And with the new wireless guitar – based on a real Gibson Les Paul model – playing the tracks is a more rewarding experience. What a shame that the boss battle seems misplace after all the fun playing encores… At least the new controller has a better responding whammy bar and is a lot more comfortable compare to X-plorer…