First stop was La Route Du Rock — the very reason myself and Valérie-Anne decided to go to France in the first place: to see The National and Yann Tiersen live! There were a few other bands I was anticipating also, namely The Flaming Lips (who put on the single greatest live show ever), Massive Attack (I wasn’t even a big fan until I saw them play) and Owen Pallet (his music is brilliant, I caught only a few songs).

Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy We Have Band, The Rapture or Two Door Cinema Club, but in no way did this hinder the overall experience, of a very relaxed 3 days: Mud, alcohol, sun, alcohol, music, alcohol.

Each day the music started at around 6-7pm and went on until 2am. We weren’t bothered about seeing most of the bands, instead choosing to sit by our tents and drink (cheap French wine FTW) before heading to the stage area around 9pm to grab some food and listening to some tunes.

Friday night saw Yann Tiersen play music neither of us were expecting; sounding more like Sigur Rós’ heavier tunes, quite like Beleriand by The Middle East, generally much less of the familiar sound of the Amélie or Goodbye Lenin soundtracks. A much more electronic, fuller and more orchestrated sound than before. In short I cannot wait for the release of Dust Lane in October.

Yann Tiersen

Sunday, the day we were both very eagerly anticipating, came around at last. The National took to the stage to screams all around (I may have screamed a little). Ignoring the few great songs they didn’t play (Green Gloves, Slow Show, Lemonworld — but I wasn’t worried about this at the time, and it had to be pointed out to me), every single one of the songs they did play was immense.

This was followed by the greatest live show ever; The Flaming Lips. As we made our way to the front of the crowd, almost touching Wayne Coyne, and collecting each of the colourful bits of paper from the confetti cannons, huge Papier-mâché hands (that shot lazers!), the huge zorb that carried Wayne above the crowd, smoke, fireworks and lots of bright lights. Of course it does appear that this format hasn’t changed in many years, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. This band have gone away from the standard format of a rock show with dull lights in varying shades of white, blue, red, pink, green etc, on a black background with a little smoke every now and then. This was much more fun.

The festival was well organised, ignoring the rain on the second day — leading to mud — which I fully embraced after much complaining at first, the food on site was great, the bar had a good system of paying for tokens and a durable plastic cup (€1) and simply handing over the number of tokens for the drink required. Good times.

Checklist:

4 pairs of jeans
1 pair of shorts
10 pairs of underwear
12 pairs of socks
6 t-shirts
3 shirts
iPhone 3Gs
iPod Touch
iPhone/iPod charger
Earphones
Old Nokia (+ charger)
Canon 40D (w/ 24-70 2.8mm)
2 batteries + charger
5 memory cards (12gb)
Deodorant
Toothbrush/toothpaste
Vaseline Pocket size
Moisturiser
Foot moisturiser
French phrasebook
Sunscreen
Pro-Plus
Passport
Money

This will be followed by a few days in Quimper, before two days in dirty, yet elegant, Paris.

This brief trip will be completed by a weekend stop-over in Birmingham to see all it has to offer.

Back soon, hopefully with plenty of photos and inspiration.

Of course the good far outweighs the bad, but that’ll be for another post. Yes, I would find fault with any device, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t voice those issues. Two days ago I posted a series of tweets detailing a number of gripes I have with the device; nothing major, just little issues, one or two were resolved, or work-arounds explained by those on Twitter. Each of these tweets began with “Things I don’t like about the iPhone:”.

It became apparent that one or two people had become irate at this line of tweeting and told me off for whining, asking why I bothered getting it, and with threatens of unfollowing. They were in the vast minority, and after being told to continue, I did. I got plenty of fantastic responses, and it was great to know that, although a little late to the game, I’m not the only one with minor issues as to the way Apple do things.

Here are each of those tweets with my reasoning behind each:

This is purely an aesthetics issue. On the iPod Touch, the headphone lead comes out from the bottom, which is less conspicuous than protruding from the top, white lead swinging to and fro when using it.

It would be very rare that I would send SMS messages to many people (unlike the bands and promoters who send one each week to inform of whatever gig and event is happening that evening to a list of those who likely aren’t interested). However, on this occasion I did find myself sending a txt to a large number of people to inform them of my new number and was simply irritated by the way this works. In the long-run I can see how it is a good thing.

A few times I have hit the “home” button only for nothing to happen. Unlike on the iPod Touch where there was a definite *click* when pressed. I’m certain this has been the case on other iPhones I’ve used. Not a major issue of course.

Of course I’m not trying to be a pervert, what about taking a photograph during a classical performance, play or other generally quiet event where sound would be heard. It certainly would appear that simply turning all sound off will solve this problem. Not what I was expecting, but it was a unanimous vote.

Lesson learned. Don’t get too distracted while walking!

So you can create your own ringtones (Mine is currently the intro to Certified by Calvin Harris), but only given the option of 7 tones for txt messages. I’m currently using “Glass”. Oh and I don’t permit options which require jailbreaking the iPhone.

Being quite limited on space, it does take quite a while to carefully select the music I want to listen to, which differs greatly depending on my mood. But when I selected “sync ringtones” followed by ‘apply’ only to find that this action had unticked “manually manage music and videso” and in turn removed all the music from the device, I was indeed a little pissed off. Lesson learned.

[admittedly these "tweets", as created using code from Blackbird Pie, don't look great in an RSS reader, maybe I'll just stick to screenshots from now on.]

Other than the fact that the Lock button isn’t as prominent as I was used to on the iPod, I guess there isn’t really much else (at the minute), well besides the battery life, but I’ve always been aware of that and may well look into one of those battery life extender things I’ve heard something about, and will ensure to always have a mains charger on me at all times.

I will may follow this up with a post of what I like about it, which will include the feeling of walking through busy streets listening to music when suddenly it lowers to have the ringtone audible; press the button on the remote, and begin talking. Click to hangup and music starts again. Curious of the time? Hold down the remote button and say “time” only to have the time told to me — and that was done as a complete guess.

I may also scrutinise the Vodafone plan/tarrif when I get a chance, and will be interested to see how their voice and data roaming holds up, especially in terms of cost.

The camera ain’t too bad either, here’s a photograph I took today, complete with a small bit of cropping using the Photoshop iPhone app:

That was quite angry. Anyway, here are a few photographs from the day:

The Protesters

Anyway, one of the greatest things about the Toy Story 3 experience, and many of the Pixar movies before it, is the short film shown before the main feature. In this case it was a film called Day & Night (watch here), which really hit me on so many levels. The film is about two characters, Day and Night, who meet — at first jealous of each other, but then realise what they can offer each other, both happiness and joy in their own ways. It is a beautiful tale of how two people come to see the each other through other perspectives.

When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly! But as their suspicions turn to curiosity, they are delighted to find that this budding friendship can offer a new perspective on the world.

Were they not the keepers of daylight and darkness, Day and Night would be a couple of average Joe’s — Day busy with sunshine and joggers, Night focused on the stars, and drive-in movies. But when their paths cross, Day and NIght find that they are more alike than different — both are fearful and jealous, but ultimately proud to share the best of themselves as they discover, better together than apart.

The most significant part of the film for me is the radio broadcast, taken from a talk given by motivational speaker and author Dr. Wayne Dyer, the words match the mood of the film perfectly; that no one should be afraid of the unknown, where would we be without it.

Fear of the Unknown. They are afraid of new ideas. They are loaded with prejudices, not based upon anything in reality, but based on… if something is new, I reject it immediately because it’s frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar. You know, to me, the most beautiful things in all the universe, are the most mysterious.

At the end of the film the two characters fall head-over-heels for each other, they accept each other, and what they can offer each other. To me, it is about tolerance and acceptance. This can be related to so many issues; race, sexuality, politics. That everyone should be accepted for who they are. We are all different, and all the same.

In time my opinion changed, just like in the beginning I didn’t appreciate John’s almost straight-from the camera approach to publishing often bland photographs, instead I realised that these were all part of a greater idea, of documenting the “normal” and “ordinary”.

This is what the exhibition looked like. It ran from 5th – 25th July in the Waterfront Hall.

John manages to see things, and has a skill for approaching people; capturing a great side of them in their portraits. In some ways I am reminded of Irving Penn’s Corner Portraits style he adopted in 1948 — by placing his subjects in a tight corner he was able to make them feel as uncomfortable, or nervous, as he felt shooting them. On the other hand, many took his approach in their stride.

After a while I began to see that John takes great portraits, and these are the ones that stand out, and his acquired technique is what makes makes them all the more unique.

I feel rather honoured to have had my own image as part of the exhibition, and grateful to have been able to take it home on the last day, in what was aptly named the “TtV Takeaway”.

I also nabbed the shot of photographer (and my university course director) Paul Seawright:

As well as having over 1000 of his own images on display, John put together a huge number of Ttv images from photographers around the world, these too were up for grabs. Here are a few of those I took home with me:

Now that the market is open each day of the weekend I’ve been a couple of Sundays recently, generally around lunchtime on an empty stomach, which is never a good idea — for me.

The band was playing, people were milling about; eating, chatting, browsing the stalls. I had my earphones in my pocket as I enjoyed the atmosphere of the everyone enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

I also bumped into @CakesbyJames (and Dawn) and had myself the most incredible brownie.

Victoria Square was also hosting a Craft Fair with had some nice bits and pieces, including this guy (forgot to get his name) making some pottery:

I may be back next weekend for more buns and coffee!

On Wednesday, I saw Angus & Julia Stone in the Button Factory. It was a fantastic gig; I truly love their music. Here’s a shit photograph taken from quite far back:

Oh and thanks everyone for the 43 “Happy Birthday” messages on twitter and 34 on Facebook. Some made me laugh a lot. People are awesome.

In order; Harp, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Fosters, Magners, Tennants, Carling, Strongbow, a keg of Heineken, two cans of Guinness and some soft drinks cans.