30 June 2010

More Live Music in England

It has been a crazy month of live music! 25th May I went to see the Flight of the Conchords at Wembly Arena - a band that needs no introduction. Their music was great! They had the audience laughing for the whole two hours. Although I thought their between songs 'banter' was a bit... unimaginative at times. On the whole though, an awesome show!

FOTC - Intro

FOTC - Business Time

FOTC - Woo a Lady

FOTC - Boom
Next up - 6th June Rage Against the Machine played a free concert in Finsbury Park to celebrate their Christmas number 1 in the UK charts... What? But RATM haven't released an album in years. Well some guy decided he had had enough 'pop bullshit' and did something about it. The winner of Simon Cowells x-factor had won the Christmas Number 1 four years running. So this guy chose the most anti-pop, anti-authoritarian song he could think of - Rage's 'Killing in the name'. He created a facebook group urging people to buy the song - it went viral! To say thanks to all those who participated in the campaign, Rage played a free concert in London. They also donated all the proceeds from the download of the track to charity - what nice guys huh? To read more about the campaign, and triumphant victory, check out the BBC news report.

10 June 2010

York (the original)

Continuing my tour of England, I decided to visit the city of York. I had heard that it is a beautiful part of the country and one place I had to see before leaving England. York has a huge history, dating back to 70AD. It has at one time been under the control of the Romans, Angles, Vikings and Normans, each leaving their mark.

I managed to buy a ticket through Megabus.com for £1! The journey was a train from London to East Midlands Parkway, and a bus from there - about four hours in total. The return journey cost £9 - so both ways for a tenner; cheap!

The journey was nothing exceptional. The most interesting part was seeing the massive cooling towers of Ratcliffe on Soar Power Station near the East Midlands Rail Station.

I arrived in York about 1pm to grey clouds and rain. I called in to the hostel to drop off my gear. At first I thought I was in the wrong place - the hostel was so nice - chandelier and nice paintings. It looked like a flash hotel. It was reasonably priced too - so if you are heading to york, check out Ace Hotel.

I donned my rain jacket and headed out. From the small amount of research I did, I found that a good introduction to the city is to walk the 'walls'. York is almost completely surrounded by ancient walls, which were first built by the Romans, and have been added to and extended by almost all inhabitants since. The walk was quite interesting - there were information boards along the way giving plenty of information about the history of York. I ended up walking the complete circuit, which fully circumnavigates the old town.
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