We are now into 2010, and thinking back on 2009 it really was one of the best years that I can remember. It was full of amazing experiences which I will never forget from my first skydive to the summer of a lifetime travelling around America and Canada.
I decided to make this video as a summary of the year to remember all those experiences. I now challenge 2010 to better 2009!
As part of my trip to London I saw Derren Brown live in the West End run of his ‘Enigma’ tour. Some of you reading this may already know that I am a fan of Derren Brown’s work and have seen him various times on tour, this show being my fourth (a post about his show I went to last year is here).
Derren tours every year with a fresh show every third year and he usually comes to Belfast on the second run of the tour. Since this was the first run of the tour then he wasn’t bringing it to Belfast so I took the opportunity while in London to see the show a year early.
The show was brilliant in general, pretty much everything I have come to expect from a Derren Brown tour. You may wonder why I say in general? Well there were certain parts I was watching and thinking ‘I have seen you do this before’ and that is probably because I have seen all his TV shows and tours but it did disappoint slightly. However, these moments were rare and the finale more than made up for any doubts I may have had earlier.
The finale was certainly one of the best, if not the best, finales of his tours and it had me on my feet along with the rest of the audience for a standing ovation!
At the end of the show Derren requested that nobody would reveal anything from the show, especially the finale, so as not to spoil it for others and I will respect that.
Without a doubt, as usual, I would highly recommend you get tickets for this tour next year as Derren really is a master at what he does and certainly knows how to put on a good show. A night of fantastic entertainment!
Following on from the last post about Barcelona, I will now write about the main reason I was there: to see U2. I decided to see them in Barcelona because I wasn’t going to be able to see them play Dublin as I’m in America. I figured I might as well take the opportunity while I had it and see them in another country. Barcelona was the first night of the tour and they would be playing the Nou Camp, this was bound to be an awesome show and they certainly didn’t disappoint!
Read on for more about it with pictures, including the newspaper article I ended up in!
As I’m sure you can tell, I’ve been trying to get to as many gigs as I can recently. I figure I might as well take advantage of the Dublin music scene while I can! The most recent gig was Feeder.
This was very much a last minute booking, I didn’t realise how close it was until I checked out Ticketmaster on Friday night only to discover it was the next Thursday, so I was straight in to book them on the Saturday.
I was looking forward to this gig after hearing a lot of people telling me how good they are live, and they really were.
The Chemists were supporting, but nobody I spoke to had heard of them so I just had to hope that they would be good and they too were brilliant. Unfortunately they haven’t got an album out yet, it looks like it’s going to be released at some point in 2009 so I can’t wait for that after seeing them live. They had a real stage presence and I really liked all the tracks they performed. Keep an eye out for these guys! It was great to get to chat to the lead singer and one of the guitarists afterwards (even if they struggled to understand my accent).
Feeder themselves were fantastic and put on such a show. It had a good mix of older tracks and tracks from the new album. Of course all the classics such as ‘Buck Rodgers‘ had the crowd going wild and ending with ‘Just A Day‘ was the best way they could’ve ever ended, especially since the crowd were literally shouting out for them to sing it when they came back for the encore!
The atmosphere was amazing, the crowd seemed to be loving it and the band looked to be having a good time as well, but how could they not with the crowd chanting ‘FEEDER FEEDER FEEDER FEEDER’ in between pretty much every song!
This gig really was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to. It left we really wanting to go to Belfast and see them the next night, but I doubt it could’ve ever lived up to Dublin. To top it all off I managed to catch one of the drumsticks that was thrown out at the end 
Here are some photos from the gig (including the drumstick I got):
I recently went to see Death Cab For Cutie in the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin. I’ve been listening to them a lot recently, climbing to number 2 in my Last FM top artists, so I was really looking forward to this gig and I wasn’t disappointed.
The support act was Frightened Rabbit who I had only heard of about a week before the gig. These guys were very good and really got the crowd warmed up.
The highlight of the night would have to be ‘I Will Follow You Into the Dark‘. This is a completely stripped back track with just acoustic guitar and vocals which was brilliant live.
Here are some photos:
