Jeff Beck at the Royal Albert Hall

Most people like a guitar played in some fashion. Not everyone likes a lot of guitar, though, and even fewer would care for an entire evening of guitar instrumentals. “Fewer” is a relative term, though: there were at least enough of us six-string aficionados to fill the Royal Albert Hall last night and watch the legendary Jeff Beck play.

I arrived late and missed much of support act Imelda May (I needed a drink; it was a hot day). She sounded good, though, a great voice and look  for some jumping rock ‘n’ roll.

Image from many-pixels via Creative Commone license

And then it was two hours of Jeff Beck. He – dressed all in white – and his band strolled out and launched into song. And that worked because Beck coaxes stories out of his guitar. Despite not using very much in the way of electronic effects pedals, and guest vocals on only two songs in two hours, he was able to express an incredible range of sound. His plectrum-less technique gives him amazing control of his volume dial and whammy bar, producing tones that sound like singing. And his style goes all over the place: mostly rock but also jazz, with middle eastern and reggae flourishes.

He kicked it off with “Beck’s Bolero” and kept going with songs old and new. I knew only a few by name: “Behind the Veil”, “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”, and the crunching “Big Block”. But all were soulful, genuine songs. Beck doesn’t always play fast, though he certainly can if he needs to. He’s more concerned with tone, and creating something that perfectly fits the song. It was amazing to watch him effortlessly let this thing loose. It didn’t get tired or boring. Each song was a fresh and interesting and self-contained bit of musical mastery. At the end of the set he performed an amazing version of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”: easily identifiable, but with lots of Beck twists.

His band was great. Tal Winkenfeld, only 23 years old and playing a bass which nearly dwarfs her, was absolutely stellar.

We screamed and clapped for an encore. He obliged with “The Peter Gunn Theme”.

And then he obliged by bringing goddamn David Gilmour onto stage.

They played two songs – surely a perfect storm of guitar-fu – and Gilmour  and Beck each sang a verse of Beck’s ’60s hit “Hi Ho Silver Lining”. Amazing.

Science Online London 2009

Remember Science Blogging London I attended last year? Remember that I enjoyed it?

It’s back, this year as Science Online London 2009. Not just for bloggers anymore! From the conference’s website:

The name of the event was changed to reflect the variety of science-related activities happening online today. Topics include blogging and microblogging, online communities, open access and open data, new teaching and research tools, author identifiers and measuring the impact of research.

It is, once again, on a Saturday in late August at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Although topics are still being defined I’m sure it’ll be an interesting day, and so I have registered.

I believe there’s still a few spots left if you’re willing to part with a tenner (there are sandwiches!). Or you can read the blog, or follow the conference twitter or search for their hashtag.

Unsung Hero: The roadie

What does it take to be a good roadie? Bob Webber knows: he’s done the job for Pink Floyd, REM, Peter Gabriel, and Counting Crows.

[Via the BBC]

Playing the Building: a David Byrne installation

It’s definitely art, but it’s also sort of music.

Talking Heads co-founder David Byrne has produced a strange musical/architectural piece that sees an old instrument integrated with the building in which it’s placed. It was a hit in New York in 2008.

Playing the building in NYC. Image from mikesorgatz via Creative Commons license

In August it’s coming to London’s Roundhouse.

Imagine an old pump organ, set at the heart of the Roundhouse, with a series of low-tech cables and wires attached to the building’s pillars, pipes and beams. Then imagine the ping, rattle and blow as they vibrate and resonate in response to the organ keys, and the building itself becomes a giant musical instrument.

Playing the Building, David Byrne’s interactive sound installation, drew crowds to New York’s Battery Maritime Museum last year. This August sees the UK premiere of his vision of ‘Victorian steam-punk technology’ at the 160-year-old Roundhouse.

The shutters will be off the windows of the domed roof, revealing the building in a new light – the perfect setting for visitors of all ages to explore the Victorian architecture and have the chance to ‘play the building’.

I think the Roundhouse is a phenomenal place to hold it: the inside of that building is a web of beams and arches.

Tickets are only £2.50. Why not go take a look?

U2 360° Tour: $100m well spent?

U2’s new stadium tour kicked off in Spain the other day. It looks like a little bit of insanity. Check out the massive in-the-round structure that the band has named “The Claw”.

From the Guardian:

U2 are not a band to do things by halves. But when their new 360° tour opened in Barcelona yesterday, with a dramatic mid-show live link-up to the International Space Station, it put previous tours in the shade.

The band kicked off their first tour in three years to a deafening crowd of 90,000 inside Nou Camp, Barcelona, the first of 3 million fans in 31 cities expected to see the concerts. With more dates expected to be announced in 2010, it is likely to be the band’s most profitable tour. Its scale underlines the increasing importance of live music in an industry battered by declining sales and online piracy.

At an estimated cost of more than $100m, 360° is the band’s most expensive tour. But it is money well spent, according to industry experts, and has the potential to eclipse takings from the 2005-06 Vertigo tour, which earned U2 a cool $389m.

With its circular stage that takes 120 lorries to transport, a 50-metre, four-legged structure to carry the sound system and a set Bono describes as “a space station designed by Gaudi”, U2 hardly looked like a band struggling to cope with the recession.

I see the band when they bring this show to Wembley on August 14th.

The Royal Society’s 2009 Summer Science Exhibition

Penrose tiling: how nature and art fill spaces

If you’re in central London tonight, or during the day this week, you should find a few moments to stop by The Royal Society. The national academy of science of the UK and the Commonwealth is staging their Summer Science Exhibition. Not only are they putting on a week of exhibits from the cutting edge of science but also featuring involved scientists themselves for you to ask questions of.

What a cool opportunity. This is a direct public-engagement event. You can look at items and exhibits and models lots of places, but how often do you get a chance to ask questions of a real, live scientist? There’s a list of exhibits here, along with writeups that indicate which ones might be good for kids.

From their site:

We’ve got over 20 fascinating, diverse and interactive exhibits. Fields of study range from how fluorescent fish could provide better understanding of human diseases, to a chewing robot that can help us develop dental technology, to how new space missions could help to unlock the history of the universe.

There’s also a good writeup at Nature Network’s London blog about the exhibition.

You can find info on how to get there and what their hours are here.

Inside an elephant

Wow.

Inside Nature’s Giants, the Channel 4 TV show I blogged about yesterday, was amazing. It really was a natural science show that went places no other has: this wasn’t just about great photography and animations, this was get-in-up-to-your-elbows gross anatomy. They didn’t explain, they showed.

They showed why an elephant’s digestive system needs to be so incredibly massive (it’s a slow and somewhat inefficient fermentation and absorption chamber).

They showed how elephants – which can’t sweat – keep cool (by pumping blood through their ears).

They showed how elephants can run (big fleshy pads under their heels, like they’re wearing running shoes).

They showed how female elephants actually have tiny tusks (that don’t emerge from their bodies).

They showed how elephants are the only land mammals that have lungs that adhere to their ribs, possibly because they evolved from sea-going mammals who needed to keep their lungs inflated against water pressure.

I cannot wait to see future shows on the whale, giraffe, and crocodile.

Remembering the Walkman

The BBC recently gave a Sony Walkman to a British 13-year-old and asked him to use it for a week. Predictably, he thought it quaint, massive, and inconvenient. He was kind enough to recognise that it was an important leap forward in music portability at the time, bless him.

I didn’t have a Sony-branded walkman; mine was by Technics, I think. It was pretty cool at the time. It ate batteries like a fat kid eats Smarties, though.

TV tonight: Inside Nature’s Giants – Elephant

At 9pm UK time on Channel 4 tonight is the first show in a science series called Inside Nature’s Giants. They’re doing detailed, on-camera dissections of large animals. In this first show they’re pulling the guts out of an elephant. In future shows they’re dissecting a giraffe, a crocodile, and a whale.

At first the ads made me wonder if it was just going to be a bizarre TV freakfeast. But then I noticed that Richard Dawkins makes a couple of appearances and figured it must have some scientific cred.

It looks like Charlie Brooker thought the same as I did, but changed his mind dramatically during his preview screening.

This is a rare thing – a hardcore biological science documentary that will both entertain and enlighten almost anyone who watches.

It’s also strangely moving. Because they chop that elephant to pieces all right – but they do so with palpable love. Watch it. It’s amazing.

Scientists create first electronic quantum processor

From breaking science news site Eurekalert:

A team led by Yale University researchers has created the first rudimentary solid-state quantum processor, taking another step toward the ultimate dream of building a quantum computer.

They also used the two-qubit superconducting chip to successfully run elementary algorithms, such as a simple search, demonstrating quantum information processing with a solid-state device for the first time. Their findings will appear in Nature’s advanced online publication June 28.

“…This is the first time they’ve been possible in an all-electronic device that looks and feels much more like a regular microprocessor.”

The key that made the two-qubit processor possible was getting the qubits to switch “on” and “off” abruptly, so that they exchanged information quickly and only when the researchers wanted them to.

The article is a good read. Get your head around their example of how quantum computation might be different from the kind of computation we’re used to:

Imagine having four phone numbers, including one for a friend, but not knowing which number belonged to that friend. You would typically have to try two to three numbers before you dialed the right one. A quantum processor, on the other hand, can find the right number in only one try.

Michael Jackson: dead?

As I write this, it seems increasingly likely that the King of Pop is dead. The twitterverse has exploded. It was just TMZ.com at first, but legit sources are saying now that it’s true. Seems like it was a heart attack.

It’ll be tomorrow before details become clear, I guess.

The Dead Weather at London’s Forum

I’m just back from one of the first shows by new alt-supergroup The Dead Weather at the HMV (formerly Kentish Town) Forum.

First up were London’s Smoke Fairies. They were two guitar-playing young women, backed by a drummer and violinist, playing what I can only describe as folk trip-hop. Everything is slow, sultry harmonies. In fact, the girls’ harmonies were a bit too close for my liking; I like a bit of room between vocal parts. But they were okay.

We didn’t have to wait too long for The Dead Weather. If you don’t know, they are:

• Alison Mosshart (of The Kills) on vocals
• Jack White (of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs) on drums (!) and vocals
• Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar and keyboards
• Jack Lawrence (of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes) on bass

I like all of those bands individually (well, I’ll admit I don’t know the Greenhornes). It seems like Jack White’s got a lot of music to get out of his system: fine with me.

Their first album, Horehound, comes out in a few weeks. Tonight was essentially them road-testing that album. It road-tested well: these songs all rock and have interesting rhythms. There’s a blues base underneath, but nothing laid-back or gentle. If things suffer a bit it’s due to some sameness in the songs’ heaviness.

“Hang You From the Heavens” is stop-start meance, and “I Cut Like a Buffalo” is weirdly funky. Theydo their cover of Bob Dylan’s “New Pony”, though they disappointingly don’t attempt their Gary Numan B-side cover of “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”. White steps up to the guitar on regular set closer “Will There Be Enough Water?”: this, and the nose-rubbing mic-sharing screams he and Mosshart share on the songs, prove to be the night’s most amazing moments.

The whole band knows what they’re doing, of course, all having been in the game a while. Mosshart is a sexy, prowling frontwoman. Her growling voice suits the songs; there’s nothing sweet required here.

White is a surprisingly competent drummer. Nothing too fancy, but he’s not just doing a straight four, either.

This is a pretty good start.

Photo from p_a_h via Creative Commons license

The jury is in: no free energy from Steorn

Long-time readers will know I’ve followed the story of Steorn, the Irish company that claimed they’d made a permanent-magnetic device that produced more energy than it consumed (which is impossible).

A couple of years ago Steorn selected a jury of scientists and engineers to evaluate their free-energy technology (all demonstration attempts since then have failed).

That jury reported yesterday. Surprise, surprise: it doesn’t work.

Of course, Steorn has said that it’s resolved many of the issues that the jury observed. Right.

And all great jokes begin as tragic mistakes

Another blip.fm blip

It happened a few weeks ago and it’s happened again: music twittering site blip.fm has messed up their maths and given me 18 quintillion “props” to give people for their tune choices.

They seem determined to give me vast sums of props, so I guess I’m just going to have to give them away.

Anti- gets even cooler

Anti- is already a very awesome record label. Even a small sample of their artists makes me drool: Tom Waits, Tricky, Booker T, William Elliot Whitmore, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Os Mutantes, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.

They’ve just gotten better. Kyp Malone from TV On The Radio has signed with Anti- to start his solo career in an exercise he’s calling Rain Machine. Sweet.

Kyp Malone (photo from Rigmarole via Creative Commons license)

Fish can count. Honeybees, too

Researchers at a university in Italy have demonstrated that small guppy-like fish named Mosquito Fish can count; if they spot different groups of their comrades they can estimate which group is bigger.

That’s a useful skill to have, the researchers say. Larger groups, or shoals, offer a more effective shield against bigger fish with empty bellies.

The researchers allowed individual mosquitofish in a tank to see groups of other fish, but barricades prevented them from seeing an entire group at once. When viewing fish one at a time in each of two groups, mosquito fish spent much more time near larger groups, Dadda and his colleagues report. The fish preferred groups of three over two fish and groups with eight fish over four fish.

The article mentions that other animals, including rats and dolphons, have previously been shown to be able to count. They also mention that honeybees can also count, but only up to 3. This is something I learned growing up on the farm: when you place bee hives near crops you want them to pollinate you never put more than five or six in a row. That’s because bees know directionality and so will approach their home hive from the right side, but when counting to get the right hive they can’t go past three. If you had more hives than six in a row all the bees, on returning, would eventually cluster in the outer three hives on each side.

"And a-one, and a-two..."

Havana Cultura: Kumar

I blogged last week about Havana Cultura, a celebration of Cuban culture that hits London’s Barbican in the coming week. If you haven’t bought tickets for some of the musical events yet maybe you should.

After the show on Saturday night (the first of the links above), rap artist Kumar will be performing on the club stage.

Case closed

Dan did it back in February, and it inspired me: as of yesterday, I’ve ditched all my CD cases and inserts.

Like him, I ripped all my CDs years ago when I first got my iPod. Since then they’ve been stored in boxes in my closet; I’ve bought only a handful of new ones since then, everything else is a download.

But I’m not one for clutter, nor for sentimental attachment to things. The music on those discs is really the only important bit of them. And at about 1000 CDs they were a significant volume, even in my closet. So I bought several large CD wallets and have spent the last two weekends sorting my CDs, removing the discs and inserting them into the wallets, then separating all paper bits from plastic cases.

Yesterday I took all the plastic and paper to the recylcing depot in Acton. It was very cathartic to get rid of all that inessential stuff. And my CDs, if I want to re-rip them or get at them for any reason, or now a lot more accessible than they were before.

PSB opinions and traffic

I was mildly surprised that my review of Friday night’s Pet Shop Boys concert had generated several user comments.

Then I looked at my stats and discovered my review had been picked up at the band’s web page (under the Pet Texts entry for 20 June). My hit number yesterday was 6 times my normal daily rate.

Thanks, guys! Maybe I should write more about pop.

Pet Shop Boys at the O2

Last night was a fun show: the British institution that is Pet Shop Boys.

I got to the O2 arena in time to catch the opening act, London-based electro-pop singer Frankmusik. Ho hum. The songs were neither interesting nor well-performed. After subjecting myself to a couple of them I went back out to the concourse for a bite.

But Pet Shop Boys; well, they were great. They continue to write songs that are just as catchy, clever, and socially-minded as they did in the mid-’80s when they got big. They did what I suppose they’ve always done: Chris Lowe in his synth and drum booth, Neil Tennant at a mic stand centre stage. Neil doesn’t put a lot of overt physicality into his singing, but he exudes a lot of class.

Image from hidden shine via Creative Commons license

There were lots of songs from new album Yes, including “Did You See Me Coming?”, “Pandemonium” and “The Way It Used To Be”. There was a scattering of songs from previous albums, but the crowd really stood up for the ones they knew: “Go West”, “Left To My Own Devices”, “Always On My Mind”, “It’s a Sin”, and a final “West End Girls”. All were delivered smoothly, with light, bouncing beats that never overwhelmed.

Just as important as the songs, however, was the show. If I’m honest, I bought last night’s ticket with the art direction in mind. I wasn’t disappointed. The stage was covered in giant blocks, a nod to the graphics on the cover of Yes. And these blocks were used as a constantly shifting stage set. Sometimes they were a jumble, a jungle to be navigated. Sometimes they were piled into tiers and stages. Sometimes they were thrown about. At one point several of them floated into the air; at another point, some of them released balloons.

Even the dancers and backup singers wore costumes there were comprised of block-shaped elements. For great parts of the show they wore blocks on their heads, which really accentuated some of the dance moves. Moreover, the blocks on stage were sometimes piled in such a way that the performers could run behind them and effect costume changes: I counted three different outfits on the dancers during one song. Take that, Kylie.

The video projections, the dancers, Neil in a tux, wry and danceable tunes: the Pet Shop Boys put on a fun, pop-art show.

Image from The Untrained Eye via Creative Commons license