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Update:

The interview went nicely.

Printed my map from the website for the interview venue, took the tube to the nearest station and alighted with 20 minutes to spare, only to realise that neither I nor anyone else in the vicinity could work out how the hell I was supposed to get to my destination. I swear sometimes I think that after taking down all the road signs to confuse the Nazi invasion force in WWII London has never gotten around to putting half of them back up.

Took at taxi the couple of blocks, which only cost about four squid. And then spent the afternoon chatting with various members in between them getting snapped by a photog or doing other interviews. The dudes were so fucking nice it was ridiculous.

All good.

Tomorrow I need to hunker down to stuff that really needs doing, though.

Over and out.

-J

Back from Bloodstock

Just spent three days in a field outside Catton, outside Birmingham, thanks to publicists and others sorting out a press pass.

It's the first time I've had the laminate, so I was walking around with it feeling like that scene in Wayne's World.

Saw some good bands, hung with cool folks (some of whom I met at Wacken) and scribbled notes.

Back to London and all the scheming and scrabbling.

Tomorrow I interview a very young band from Florida that have an album out very soon. (Not the youngest metal band from Florida; not anymore).

Over and out.

-J

Eyesight

I'm slightly concerned about my eyesight.

Lately I've been noticing that when I'm expecially tired I've been finding it hard to read a novel or somesuch. My running joke has been do I need to get my eyes tested or do I just need to stop trying to read when I haven't had any sleep for twenty hours or more.

But last night, just as it was twilight, I was stepping out of Tescos and I realised that in the distance (something like 150 metres away) a face was blurred.

People who know me know that I have a freakish ability to pick faces out of crowds at stupid distances. This combined with my catlike night-vision has always led me to believe that I was pretty damn lucky when it came to eyesight. But all the way home I was having the same problem: things were fuzzy at distances that they would have previously not been.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is how it has always been for me and I'm freaking out because I'm discovering that my eyesight isn't as superhuman as I previously thought. Maybe after a week in Germany, where the air is clear, this is just vapour in the air that is fogging my vision.

But I am worried.

Suddenly going down a couple of points in terms of vision has all kinds of implications, not least that sometimes it is important to be able to spot trouble before trouble spots you.

Time for an eye test?

-J

Hey Up!

I'm back in London.

I've been recovering from my two days in Hamburg, which in turn were a recovery from my four days at the Wacken Open Air Festival.

Wacken was amazing. Sixty-Five thousand metallers in a field. The nearby village of Wacken has a standing population 51 weeks of the year of 1800 souls.

The bands were great, the people were really friendly. The atmosphere was amazing. The scenery was great. The weather was either too hot or raining, but I didn't care.

To be honest, something like this might actually reverse my long-standing hate of camping. But let's not get carried away.

I met a lot of people from around the world. There were Australians there who had come all the way from the Antipodes. They showed me their wrists to show the half dozen festival bracelets that they had accumulated at all of the festivals that they had been to so far.

The interview I was supposed to do got rescheduled, so I wound up doing it in my hotel room in Hamburg with my mobile phone set on speaker and my recorder on the table next to it.

Hamburg was the best place to wind down after the festival. Hamburg is compact and very chilled. The hotel/hostel I stayed in was clean and modern and full of people who had just been at Wacken.

Germany seems to be so much cleaner than London. The people seem friendlier and the cities seem to be better realised. Hamburg felt like a parallel universe Brisbane in a lot of ways, only with nicer buildings and everyone speaking German.

I definitely have to go back sometime.

Forgetting to bring a towel meant that I had to buy a set at the Festival, so I am now the proud owner of a Wacken Hand und Ducshe Tuchen pair.

Forgetting to bring soap meant that I had to go into the village to buy some, which meant that I got to meet some of the incredibly nice people of Wacken Village.

I could write a book about my week in Germany.

I will write more about this all, but in the meantime I have work to do.

Over and out.

-J