Good, Bad & Strange
An easy way to make sense of things.
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Other GBS |
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Latest GBS This section is where you will find my latest efforts. If you are new to the site I suggest you read the Return to the UK - May 2009
What is Good, Bad & Strange? section first and then make your way around the world using the links above. For the rest of you, the latest GBS are currently:-
Canada First 6 weeks - November 2008 to January 2009
Salzburg - October 2008
Lollapalooza - August 2008
Return to the UK – May 2009
Conversation at the receiving line at Denise’s wedding with the groom’s parents
"Mum, this is Rebecca and Liam, they’ve come over from Canada.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Why did you bother coming back for this?”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Can you fit us in your suitcase on the way back?”
“I just got an email from Aileen.”
“What has she got to say for herself.”
“She says it was sunny yesterday, but snowing today.” – 17th May
Having spent nearly six months in Canada we returned to the UK to help celebrate my mother in laws 70th birthday and one of Rebecca’s friend’s wedding.
Here’s the good, bad and strange.
Good Things
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A Green and Pleasant land – I know it’s a cliché, but when you’ve been away in a monochrome landscape for a while, the UK really does look and feel like a green and pleasant place. |
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Friends and Family – Six months away seemed to render old irritations irrelevant, and it was great to see our friends too. |
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People – Not sure if it was due to the weather, but practically everyone we came across had a smile on their face. What happened to the miserable buggers who populated the country before we left? |
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There’s life here – In two hours walking around central London I saw more movement, more attractive women, more stylish men, more children smiling, more wheeler dealing, more confused tourists and more life than I had in six months in Calgary. |
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Sports Coverage – I didn’t realise what I had been missing. Real coverage of sport; no adverts every few minutes, commentators who knew what they were talking about (except David Pleat). Sky Sports made TSN, Sportsnet and The Score look dull and pointless in comparison. |
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New Forest – A fabulous setting for Joyce’s 70th birthday celebration, wonderfully green, full of deer and newly born foals of wild mares. Perhaps most importantly there were no restrictions on where to go or “stay on the trail” signs. |
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Champions League final – I spent most of the match with a blissful smile on my face. The only thing better than Barcelona’s wonderful flowing football was that they were completely outplaying Man Utd. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people. |
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Taking the piss – We had been at the airport for about five minutes before we heard two lads taking the piss out of their friend. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it until then. The Canadian sense of humour tends to be an American sense of humour with a dose of self deprecation, no piss taking allowed, or understood for that matter. |
Bad Things
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Food poisoning – while I was enjoying myself in Nottingham, Rebecca was foolishly eating snails in a Hemel Hempstead restaurant. The resultant food poisoning was as nasty as it was predictable. |
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Over indulgence - Too much food, too much drink, too little sleep and a schedule that allowed for no rest at all, was great for the first week. Then exhaustion and the food poisoning got to us. |
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Traffic – Busy doesn’t cover it. I suppose the kids being off for Whitsun week didn’t help, but we seemed to spend as much time stationary in traffic jams as we did moving. |
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Travel prices – Travelling on a train anywhere near London seems to have got even more expensive and even less efficient. Petrol prices of £1 (C$1.75) / litre had us gasping after paying 80c (46p) / litre in Calgary. |
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Airline food problems – Normally we order low fat meals on planes, as it tends to get served first and is often a lot less greasy and nasty then the standard meal. On our flight to the UK, BA forgot one of them, on the way back they served the most disgusting sandwich I’ve eaten in years. It seemed to consist of fried pus and red pepper skin. |
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Missing out on a job interview – I’ve been looking for work for several months now, so when I got a message to say I had secured an interview with Trans-Canada pipelines I was very pleased. Just a few days later I was extremely pissed off when I was told my agent had forgotten I was away and that the company wouldn’t wait for my return. |
Strange Things
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Denise’s wedding – Rebecca’s friend Denise had conveniently planned to get married during the two weeks we were back. So we attended a good natured wedding and had fun, which is more than can be said for the groom’s side of the family. While I have nothing but good wishes for Neil (the groom) his family left a bit to be desired (see conversation above) and his best person (sister) gave possibly the dullest speech I’ve ever heard at a wedding. However this was all nicely balanced out by the folks at our table who ranged from polite, to insane via very interesting. Keep up the good work with the street kids in Africa, Patrick and be careful where you park that car Graham, you never know when Ricky Gervais might turn up. |
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Whaley Bridge – We met my sister in the Peak district, in the small, but strange town of Whaley Bridge. It’s a pretty little place, complete with a canal and park, featuring dope smoking youth. But the crowning achievement is a cafe that belongs somewhere in the midst of time, where my 18 month old nephew was nearly served a cheese and chilli sauce sandwich as the nice old man taking orders had got confused and where butter was the main ingredient in all of the dishes. |
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A typically English five minutes – A warm May Sunday afternoon, M25 slow traffic, Radio 1 on in the car, Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers” is followed by DJ Nihal chatting to a bunch of teenagers about what they are definitely going to do this summer. 16 year old Christian tells us he’s going to cross the English Channel in a canoe for charity. Nihal asks what his parents think about the idea. Christian admits that he hasn’t told them yet and thought he’d tell the nation on Radio 1 before he surprises them with the idea. Chuckling away, we crawl under a bridge at ten miles an hour. Six foot high whitewashed capital letters on the bridge telling us to “GIVE PEAS A CHANCE,” fade in the sun. |
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Not as painful as it could have been – Leeds United’s exit from the League 1 playoffs happened in the semi-final before we landed. So while I was somewhat upset at the time, at least I didn’t have to sit amongst my friends while we got beaten in the final, again. |
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Let There Be Rock – In the Proud Gallery in Camden we spent a few minutes looking at some excellent early photos of AC/DC, a few of which were from before the Bon Scott era. Although some of the shots were excellent, I was put off buying any framed copies by prices that started in the region of £200 and got substantially higher. That and putting pictures of blokes in school uniforms on the wall just doesn’t seem right. |
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Flick of the Switch – On our first day back, I found it strangely comforting to be able turn off an electrical device with the switch on the wall instead of having to yank the plug out. |
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Relative Size – After six months of Canada, everything in England seemed to have shrunk, especially in relation to driving. The roads had got smaller, in some places tiny. The cars had got smaller too, with virtually no pick-up trucks around. Perhaps most disturbingly, parking spaces had shrunk several feet, which took a few days to get used to. |
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Ski Jump Wii champion – Whilst my efforts with the hula hoop and the balancing balls left a bit to be desired, I managed to discover a hidden talent for Wii ski jumping. Somehow I’m not convinced I’d be quite as good at the real thing. |
Click on the picture below to see the Return to the UK photos
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Conversation with a Service Canada official while getting a Social Insurance Number.
“Ok, it seems I have everything here, can you just check these details for me?”
“Yes that looks fine.”
“Great. Now can you stand up and sing the Canadian national anthem for the whole office?”
“I could, but I don’t think you, or your colleagues would appreciate it.”
“That’s ok. You don’t really have to do that.”
Conversation with a Canadian immigration official on arrival in Calgary, Alberta.
“We’re going to Las Vegas for a few days in a couple of weeks. Will we have any trouble getting back in?”
“No your details are on the computer, you might get some stupid yahoo in the States that won’t let you on a plane, but if that happens, contact the Canadian embassy and they’ll sort you out.”
“Nice one. It’s as easy as that?”
“Yeah we make it easy for you. Where are you staying in Vegas?”
About five minutes later in the same conversation.
“So if you go towards Cima in the Mojave area you’ll get a really clear road through to LA.”
“Thanks that’s really helpful.”
Conversation at a mobile phone store; two days after arriving
“I think the weathers going to be tricky to get used, minus nine this morning.”
“Minus nine, that’s warm. Wait until it gets to minus thirty, your nasal hairs freeze when you breathe in.”
“No, you’re joking.”
“Honestly. It’s a really strange sensation.”
Our first two encounters with Canadian officialdom were a little different to those we had been used to. They were helpful and had a sense of humour. As for the weather; that was a different matter altogether.
We’ve been permanent residents of Canada for six weeks now and there’s been plenty of good, bad and strange.
Good Things
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The “Locals” – By and large a friendly and helpful bunch of people, although it is proving quite difficult to find anyone who is originally from Calgary. |
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+15 Walkways – Much of downtown is easily crossed 15 feet above the ground in heated walkways. Handy for most of the year, indispensible when it’s –25ºC outside. |
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Chinatown – Calgary has an impressive Chinatown, although like most Western efforts it’s more of a generic Asian town, so there are some excellent Japanese, Korean and even Malay influences too, which is a bonus. However one thing you’ll only ever get in a North American Chinatown is an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. |
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First Canadian Christmas – We thoroughly enjoyed Christmas thousands of miles from anyone we knew and would happily recommend it. |
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Happy New Year – We finished 2008 and started 2009 watching a band called the Joe Defendants on a small outdoor stage in Calgary’s Olympic Plaza. They played an eclectic set in temperatures worse than –20ºC. Not many bands can go seamlessly from Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly covers to a version of The Ramones “I wanna be sedated” in decent weather, let alone while their fingers are freezing off, so well done folks. The fireworks on the city hall at midnight were short lived but fun and the flame on the Calgary Tower looked very effective. |
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On my radio – We hired a car for our first few days in Calgary. It was equipped with Sirius satellite radio. While flicking through the million or so channels, I discovered AC/DC radio, playing AC/DC, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. I was overjoyed; Rebecca wasn’t quite so thrilled. |
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AC/DC live – We went to Las Vegas for a few days, partly to celebrate Rebecca’s birthday, but mainly to see AC/DC play in LA. They were great, as usual; even Rebecca enjoyed it, in marked contrast to her feelings about AC/DC radio. |
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Local beer – Canadians love beer, especially Canadian men. In an effort to blend in I’ve tried several local brands of beer and while the locals seem to have produced a decent brown ale; I’m still searching for a good pint of bitter. |
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Figure skating with sticks – The one thing Canadian men seem to love more than beer is ice hockey. In the spirit of learning more about the locals, I’ve tried to watch plenty of televised games and I’m slowly getting to grips with the only non combat sport I know of that encourages players to knock lumps out of each other. |
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Let it snow – Before we got here I explained to a lot of people that one of the things I was looking forward to was a proper cold winter. There was snow on the ground when we arrived and it made us both smile. On the day we flew to Las Vegas it snowed heavily for hours. When our flight was delayed for three hours I was beginning to wish I’d kept my mouth shut. |
Bad Things
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Frozen – I might have wished for a proper winter, what we got was painful. We arrived back from Las Vegas (12ºC cloudy) the day after some of the worst December weather in memory had arrived in Calgary. There was snow everywhere and the temperature was –27ºC, -38ºC with wind chill. It was the kind of cold that is difficult to imagine unless you stick your head in the freezer for a couple of minutes. If you forgot your hat you couldn’t stay outside for long without your ears feeling like they were about to snap off. For a period of ten days the highest temperature was –10ºC. We had definitely got a proper winter. |
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Connection problems – It’s official. Mobile phone vendors are tossers no matter where they are based. The number of total wankers in phone shops who tried to convince us that their phones were the best, before talking about three year contracts and hundreds of dollars of pointless extras was astronomical. Even more galling is that every mobile provider charges for incoming calls, which I think is crap. |
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Gun crime and gangs – Both are becoming more prevalent in Calgary. Four homicides within the first twenty-four hours of 2009 and an ongoing war between the two most prominent gangs suggest that the problem won’t go away anytime soon. |
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Where the streets have no names – Like many North American cities Calgary has numbers for many of its roads. Avenue numbers run north and south from the Bow River, while streets go east and west from Centre Street. This causes no problems if you know which part of town you’re in. For example 32nd Avenue North West is nowhere near 32nd Avenue South East. The really confusing thing is the property numbering. Normally between 3rd and 4th Street you would find numbers like 301, 320 and 350. In Calgary between 3rd and 4th you get 401, 420 and 450. But the avenues do work as expected. Confused? I was for several days. |
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TV – Too many adverts, too often. The same adverts at every break. Warnings for unsuitable, offensive TV not only at the start of the show, but after every set of adverts. Most painfully, films are cut “to fit the allocated time allowed”. So two hour and a half hour films are put in a three-hour slot, but as one hour of adverts need to be shown, the film is cut accordingly. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the BBC. |
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Sugary Food – Most Europeans would have you believe that North Americans have sugared coated everything to make it easier for them to swallow. While that may be a valid metaphor, it seems to have been taken too literally in the case of food production. Worst affected is bread, nearly all of it tastes like cake. |
Strange Things
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White Hat Volunteers – On arrival at Calgary airport you’ll be greeted by one or more friendly volunteers in red waistcoats and white cowboy hats. The uniform isn’t in use much outside the airport, so if you’ve come in on a long flight and were barely awake when you cleared customs, you might get a bizarre sense of déjà vu when you get back to the airport to fly home and spot a white hatter. |
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Learning a new language – They speak English here; but it’s not the language I grew up learning. F'sure, anyways, eh? |
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Political intrigue – In early December, a recently elected, minority, Conservative government faced an angry coalition after trying to cut public financing for all parties. With the possibility of losing power to the coalition, the prime minister got parliament prorogued (suspended) until January so that new financial measures could be worked out and from his point of view, so the coalition could fall out with each other and disintegrate. That’s the very short version of the most contentious and exciting week in Canadian politics for years. |
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Happy Holidays – While rampant levels of Christianity are evident here, it still unusual for anyone to say Merry Christmas. Instead, the rather bland “Happy holidays,” is dragged out, so those celebrating Hanukah, Kwanza or anything else aren’t offended. |
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Downtown Monastery – Not quite sure if downtown Calgary is the most tranquil of surroundings, but the Avatamsaka Monastery has set up there anyway. |
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Chinese tweaks – While looking for furniture, we discovered lots of items that looked very similar. In one furniture shop we were told that all of the furniture is made in China. The only difference is that each shop has their own design tweak to make sure their furniture is slightly different. That way no two shops sell the same thing and all of them can promise that theirs is the lowest price on that piece of furniture, as no one else stocks it. |
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Should drug dealers charge GST? – Alberta has the lowest rate of tax of any Canadian province, but for most Albertans it’s still too high. Obsession with tax finds its way into many conversations. A few days ago Rebecca overheard two blokes trying to work out the best way to avoid paying tax while sharing a large spliff. |
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Pear shaped? – The female Canadian, especially in middle age, seems to be bottom heavy with short legs. Possibly from years sat on comfy chairs watching crap TV and eating sugary food. |
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Local drinks – The Caesar cocktail, invented in Calgary, combining vodka, Worcester sauce and Clamato juice (tomato and clam mix) sounds almost as disgusting as Canada Dry, Green Tea Ginger Ale. |
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Local Teams – Ok I know the Flames idea fits in with the oil industry connections of the town, but I’m not quite sure what the names of the other teams, the Hitmen and the Roughnecks, are trying to convey about Calgary. |
Click on the picture below to see the Canada – First Six Weeks Photo Album (opens in a new window)
As we’re about to emigrate to Canada, we decided to spend a couple of weeks travelling in Europe before we left. Most of our destinations were very familiar and have been covered elsewhere on this site. Salzburg was somewhere new, so here’s the good, bad and strange.
Conversation in a café in the old town (Altstadt)
“What language are they speaking?”
“Those old biddies over there. The ones that just asked for a cup of coffee in a really loud and obnoxious fashion?”
“Yes.”
“English, with a very broad Irish accent. They’ve been moaning about young people having no manners.”
Good Things
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The Altstadt – The old town has been tastefully preserved in its medieval form and is a nice place to stroll around. |
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Mozart – This is where the great composer was born and grew up. The town obviously holds their favourite son in great esteem. |
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Scenery – Salzburg is in a sub alpine area, so you can see fantastic mountain scenery without having to leave the centre of the town. Although if you make your way up to the local palace (Schloss) the view is even better. |
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Residence Galerie – The gallery was showing a special exhibition on the nature of sin and its portrayal in paintings since the 1500’s. It was thought provoking and well put together. |
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Sacher Torte – The delicious chocolate covered cake is really from Vienna, but that doesn’t stop it being exceptionally tasty in Salzburg. |
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Mirabell Gardens - Cunningly cut out and planted, the local council buildings gardens are surprisingly nice. As you will see from the picture in the album below. |
Bad Things
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The Cathedral (Dom) - Outside, a fairly pleasant if not great looking building. Inside a rather vulgar display of the affluence of the town. I’m not a religious person, but that didn’t matter here. The Dom is set up as a tourist attraction, not a place of worship. If you want one of those go to the Franziskaner church around the corner. |
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Mozart – Favourite son he may be, but he’s also the favourite brand. Mozart’s image adorns far too many things from restaurant frontages to chocolates and perfume. We didn’t try Mozart flavoured liquor in a violin shaped bottle and if you did, or even worse, bought a bottle, you need a slapping. |
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High on a hill, with a bloke pretending to herd goats - Possibly a worse rip off than Mozart liquor, the daily ‘Sound of Music’ tour offered a trip around the locations for the filming of the famous (and somewhat annoying) tale of the Von Trapp family. Yes the Julie Andrews version, not the real story. |
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Dodgy Busker – Yes, I can see you strumming a few dull chords while a marvellous melody comes out and if I look a little harder I can spot the speaker, half hidden by a blanket on your left leg, where the music is coming from, you nasty little fraud. |
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No Kangaroos – A few years ago in Vienna we smiled when we saw a “No Kangaroos in Austria” t-shirt. Sadly there were Australians in Salzburg, showing all the tact and understanding that we’ve come to expect from them when they leave their tiny little corner of the world. |
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Red Bull – The bloke that invented it (Dietrich Mateschitz) is from Salzburg. Sadly I didn’t know where he lived; otherwise I could’ve drunk a bottle of vodka with a couple of cans of his stinky, syrupy liquid. Then I could’ve gone to his house and annoyed the hell out of him for hours before the caffeine high wore off, instead of just falling over and then asleep, which is what would’ve happened if I’d only drunk the vodka. |
Strange Things
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Sat Nav Madness – Our satellite navigation system got very confused on the way in to Salzburg. As well as sending us around in concentric circles for nearly half an hour, it also managed to produce a route on its ‘short’ setting that was a longer distance than the ‘fast’ setting, which I thought was impossible. |
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Open Lift – The hotel we chose had an old style lift where you open an outside door and then climb into the lift. Usually there is an inner door or at least a cage style metal sliding door. In this instance there was only the outer door, which gave you the strange sensation that you weren’t really held in. We used the stairs quite a lot after the first night. |
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Plastic Pod Bathroom – We also tried to spend as little time in the bathroom as possibly, as it looked and felt like it had been stripped straight out of a cheap cruise ship and then inserted into our room. |
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What are you looking at? – Outside McDonalds some of the local Salzburg youth hung around making a bit of noise, in the manner of teenagers the world over. The only difference was that they were all dressed in designer clothes and none of them looked like they’d ever need a job flipping burgers. Salzburg really is a very affluent place. |
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Horse shit shovelling man – Riding a bike with a cart on the front, Salzburg’s smelliest man stops regularly to get his shovel out and fill his cart with the copious droppings of Salzburg’s horses. If you can stand the smell he’s a good man to follow through crowded areas. |
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Tourist Tastes – Salzburg has restaurants that specialise in Austrian food, restaurants that specialise in Italian food and even the odd one or two that specialise in Indian food. Sadly a couple of local proprietors have decided to specialise in all three. So if you fancy a curried schnitzel pizza just head to one of the Austrian, Italian and Indian restaurants. |
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Blaine? – In a Salzburg square a figure balances on a large golden ball. Is it pretentious wanker David Blaine performing his latest dull stunt? Probably not. See the picture in the photo album below. |
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Mozart’s Balls – With a picture of the ubiquitous Mozart on the wrapper, this chocolate with a puréed nut filling was the size of a large testicle. So like many visitors, we left Salzburg with one of Mozart’s balls in our mouths. They were quite tasty. |
Click on the picture below to see the Salzburg photo album
(opens in a new window)
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Spend the last weekend before you get married, three thousand miles from home at a music festival. We’d been to Lollapalooza in 2007 when we were travelling in the US and really enjoyed it, so we went back to find out if Perry Farrell’s creation would be as good again in 2008.
Here’s the good, bad and strange.
On Stage Snippets 1 – Radiohead
“Are you all right out there? We can’t really see that well, you seem quiet and we’re really jetlagged.” – Inspiring stuff from Thom Yorke near the end of their set.
On Stage Snippets 2– Rage Against the Machine
“Please step back five paces. Help your brothers and sisters and just step back five paces.” – Constantly, throughout the set, sadly.
On Stage Snippets 3 – The Ting Tings
“We’ve been touring America and it’s been great. Your tour buses are brilliant. The ones in England all smell of wee.” – Insightful and entertaining.
On Stage Snippets 4 – De Novo Dahl
“This song is about what happens when keeping it real goes wrong.” – See the picture in the photo album to realise how real they weren’t keeping it.
On Stage Snippets 5 – Wild Sweet Orange
“We love playing for people and, that`s, what you are. Thanks so much” – A few too many stimulants before they came on perhaps?
Good Things
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The Setting – Grant Park is a fabulous place for any event and with no camping allowed; Lollapalooza felt a much cleaner festival than anything in the UK. |
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Stage placement & Scheduling – Seven stages and never more than five minutes between sets on adjacent stages means you never have those long dull moments between bands. You know; the ones you used to have to fill with booze and drugs. |
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Nine Inch Nails – By far the best set of the festival from Trent Reznor and his band. Even if you hated the music the light show was incredible. Fortunately I liked the music too. |
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The Raconteurs – I wasn’t expecting too much, having only heard and not particularly liked “Steady as she goes,” and not being a big fan of the White Stripes. But The Raconteurs were great, playing a really solid rock set with loud guitars and lots of sweat. After seeing them I discovered that their second album is also excellent. |
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Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - A good old fashioned soul revue, complete with excellent music from The Dap Kings who are a really tight soul band and entertaining singing and dancing from Tina Turn..sorry Sharon Jones. Even the sight of a fat bloke being pulled from the audience to dance with Sharon didn’t spoil the set. Leaving before they finished to see Rage Against the Machine was a mistake though. |
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Ting Tings – I was expecting the first act on the main stage on Saturday to give us a few cheesy laughs that few of the Americans around us would fully appreciate. I was wrong, they were great and lots of people really enjoyed the set. More importantly I was pleased to have discovered what the B52’s would have sounded like if they were born twenty years later in Manchester rather than Georgia. |
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Gogol Bordello – If you like dancing in a stupid fashion, sweating, drinking and the idea of “gypsy punks,” then you really should go to see Gogol Bordello the next time they play near your town and wear some purple while you’re at it. |
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Blues Traveler – Any band that comes on to “America: Fuck yeah,” from “Team America: World Police” and does a version of “The Devil went down to Georgia” with a harmonica replacing the violin part, deserve to be in good things. So that’s where Blues Traveler are. |
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Holy Fuck – Replacing the awful Noah and the Whale at the last minute on the main stage, first thing on Friday, Holy Fuck turned out to be a fantastic surprise. Playing improvised electronica and techno with live bass and drums give them an unusual, but exceedingly danceable feel. |
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Other Good stuff, for no real reason than I liked them - Okkervil River, John Butler Trio, Foals, The Parlor Mob and The Blakes. |
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Lederhosen’s Beer Garden – It looks like the organisers finally read my comments on last year’s festival and gave us an alternative to drinking the piss commonly known as Budweiser. Lederhosen’s (see picture) wasn’t really close to being a German beer garden, but it was much better than the Bud alternative. |
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Food – Wonderful pizza, noodles and ice cream at reasonable prices, other festivals and sporting events please take note. |
Bad Things
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Getting in - Where did all these people come from? Last year it took us about five minutes to stroll in on Friday morning. This year we were waiting nearly an hour before we got through the wristband redemption queues, bag check and booze tag zone. |
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Rage Against the Machine – I like RATM and I was really looking forward to their set. Sadly lots of other people were looking forward to it too and they were bigger, louder, drunker and more stupid than me. It was like going back to the eighties when crowds were less controlled and pushing and shoving were common place in a rush to the front. And this was all before the band came on. When they did, the crowd surged forward and mayhem resulted. We stayed around the back, but we could see people streaming back looking pained. The set was often broken up by pleas to step back a few paces. Zack’s powerful political ranting was wasted on a bunch of tossers who just wanted to rage rather than see Rage. |
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Innerparty system – The biggest disappointment of the festival for me. I’d heard a couple of their tunes and was suitably impressed, however after ten minutes of drivel I gave up and went to queue for a piss. |
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Identikit Kids – Not a band, but come to think of it, not a bad name for a band. Getting back to the point, the uniform for young lads was bare-chested, long khaki shorts (with obligatory pants showing above the waistband) and cheap looking expensive trainers. See the picture in the photo album for a good example. |
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Smiley photo girlies – Another potential band name? No probably not. In this instance I’m referring to girls who are at the festival because their friends are, not because of any interest in music. A smiley photo girl spends all of her time standing up on an expensive blanket with her friends, back to the stage, talking loudly. That was fairly annoying, but the habit of taking endless pictures of herself and her mates grinning like idiots with a glimpse of a stage in the background, without ever watching or listening to the band was just too much. |
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Excessive Corporate Sponsorship – I’ve deliberately avoided naming the main sponsors of the event (except when I’m slagging off their products) as they’ve had enough exposure all ready. |
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Too hot and bothered – The queue to get in was a sign. Compared to 2007, there were vastly more people around, especially on Friday and at the south end of the park on Sunday. It was also way too hot on Friday and Saturday. The combination led to tempers getting frayed a lot easier than last year and may have contributed to the RATM farce, although I doubt it. |
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What we didn`t see – Sadly, schedule conflicts meant we missed The Black Keys, Love and Rockets and Flogging Molly. |
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Budweiser – What’s the difference between piss in a plastic cup and Budweiser? The Budweiser is served cold. |
Strange Things
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Bang Camaro – Ten lead singers, three guitars and a whole lot of metal. A great, if strange, way to start the festival on Friday morning. |
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The Go Team – In less than an hour, The Go Team went from hip hop to pop and back again via Sonic Youth and Zulu rhythms. Interesting, but strange. |
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Duffy – Good voice spoiled a little by the “I’m in America me, oh, what do I do now?” amateurishness of her stage presence. |
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The Favourite Song Syndrome – More prevalent in 2007, but worked this year for Duffy. As soon as the last chords of “Mercy” died down, half of the crowd disappeared. The same happened after The Raconteurs played “Steady as she goes”, which was great for us, because we could move a lot closer to the stage (see the pictures). |
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Fake Plastic Fireworks – Radiohead play one of their better tunes and seemingly in time with the crescendos in “Fake Plastic Trees”, fireworks go off in the distance. Is it part of the set? No, the fireworks are down the road at the Soldier Field stadium for a pre season NFL event. How do I know? Exactly the same thing happened last year to enliven Pearl Jam’s set. |
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De Novo Dahl – On a smaller stage, early on Saturday morning, De Novo Dahl provided a distraction, dressed in matching red and yellow Victorian swimming outfits. They told us about something that is really important to them; dancing and played a cover of Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks.” Keeping it real indeed. |
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Devotcka – They did the soundtrack from Little Miss Sunshine. That was a little bit strange and so were they. |
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Explosions in the Sky – The instrumental guitar group sound great, even though they’ve only got one song and they played it on a loop for their entire hour long set. |
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Wild Sweet Orange – Along with the snippet listed at the top, we had “This song is about a house, so this is for everyone who grew up in a house,” and quite a few odd tunes from their album “We have reason to be uneasy.” I liked them. |
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Kidzapalooza rules – In the kiddie zone rules had to be strictly observed – (see picture) |
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Very Superstitious – There were plenty of kid friendly performances on the Kidzapalooza stage but we weren’t allowed to get too close, as we had no children with us. However, we did manage to hear Perry Farrell performing a strange cover version of “Superstition.” |
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Gnarls Barkley – I wasn’t sure to expect from Gnarls Barkley and although we watched most of their set I’m still not sure what I got out of it other than reverse proof of the favourite song syndrome when thousands of people appeared within twenty seconds of the start of “Crazy.” |
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The Cooling Bus – Getting too hot and can`t find any shade. No problem, hop on one of the two “Cooling buses” and get the full benefit of air conditioning. |
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Perry’s – New in 2008, Perry’s was a sort of dance tent, with room for a hundred or so people. Most of the time at least a thousand seemed to want to get in. I think Perry’s will be a much bigger part of next year’s festival. |
Click on the picture below to see the Lollapalooza photo album
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Welcome to the Good, Bad and Strange website. My name is Liam and I spent the end of 2006 and most of 2007 travelling around the world with my wife Rebecca. I'm the one in the hat. Good, bad and strange is the concept I devised to make sure that my friends actually read the travel emails that I sent home. The original idea was easy enough. Instead of sending pages of drivel, like most enthusiastic travellers, I would send an email in simple bullet point form about all of the good, bad and strange things that we encountered and then throw in a few jokes. To start the mail, I found that a simple conversation was a useful way to introduce a country. A few pictures always helped to finish things off, if nothing else, as a welcome distraction when I’d got carried away with too many strange things. Subsequently I realised that everything we came across was either good, bad or strange, or none of the above and therefore not worthy of comment anyway. I started to think purely in terms of good, bad and strange and wondered if it could be applied to other subjects outside of travel. I think it can and that’s part of the reason for this website. Hopefully you’ll enjoy reading the reports and will be interested enough in the good, bad and strange concept to start putting together your own GBS, not just for travel, but for, anything, really. That's what the Other GBS page on this site is for. Hopefully people from all sorts of places can write Good, Bad & Strange reports on all sorts of subjects to add to the ones I have all ready posted on that page. After all, good, bad and strange is an easy way to make sense of things and if something isn’t good, bad or strange, it isn’t really worth talking about. 
Have you written a GBS?
If you are a regular visitor to this site and would like to contribute, please send your GBS to:- liam@goodbadstrange.com
All you need is a conversation, at least one good thing, one bad thing and one strange thing. Pictures are optional, but if you do decide to include them, I suggest you set up a web album in Picasa and then send me the code to paste into the site.
It's not that difficult; believe me, if it was I wouldn't be able to do it.
