These Particular Angels Don't Sing Jazz Chords...

I'm 18! WE ARE MAN! I had a really nice day - I got up for uni and Mum said Happy Birthday and gave me presents (to be opened later), and then I headed off to uni. Amelia "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" everytime someone said my name, got me a bunch of Kitkats, and Nikki got me some chocolate and scratchies! =D We didn't win anything. =( I also got to meet up with Rhed and Maddy for lunch at the Pancake Manor, and Maddy presented me with a hip hop 'how to be a hipster' kit!

Glasses for the essential hipster; Coffee from an obscure location you've probably never heard of before, vintage book you probably haven't read, essential notepad, indie group ironically, Kitkats because I'm Sam.

Amelia organised it so we could go to the uni bar after our last lecture. It was me, Amelia, Nikki, Nick, Liam to start with, but we were then joined by Cameron, Joel, Maggie, Chris and Joel. I had a fantastic time at the Guild Bar! =D Amelia bought me my first and second drink, and after I tried to convince everyone that Clive Owen looks like Nicolas Cage, Cameron bought me another beer and a shot to stop me. =P I was a bit, uh, tipsy, by the end, but I hopped on the bus and went home and managed to sober up on the way. Mum cooked me steak and we had an awesome chocolate mousse cake from Breadtop! Thanks for the awesome night, guys!

Left to right: Liam, Nikki, Me, Amelia, Chris, Nick

This week I also had the great pleasure of attending Jason Robert Brown's one night Brisbane Concert. Brown is an exceptional pianist, with an even better talent at composing and collaborating repertoire for a fantastic 2 hour spectacle. He was joined on stage for a couple of times by Rachel Beck, who is an Australian singer who was pretty good too (I'll get to her later).

The evening got off to a pretty rocky start.

Angst, anger, romance - oh my!

With that in my mind, I bought a programme. But I did not enjoy it. =P Well partly because I'm stubborn, but mainly because it cost $15 AND IT WAS EIGHT PAGES LONG. I was still being a drama queen after and punched the program when the music in the theatre was playing 'A Miracle Would Happen' (from L5Y) and Cai asked if this was 'the one where the guy dies'.

Beck came back on stage to sing some more stuff, and she was lovely but sometimes...sucked. Who exactly was she racing with? Her voice has a wonderful and sweet texture, but she rushed way too much - I was upset with her 'Still Hurting' (which Mum painfully calls 'Jaime') because her first line was 'Jamieisover [DRAMATIC PAUSE] andJamieisgone'. She managed to slow down by the last verse, but the damage was done. The other little thing was, while she was a soprano, she struggled to belt out those top notes, and instead sung passages with more like a delicate, vibrato laden style.

Besides that, she was wonderfully flirty and sang with absolute conviction and confidence. She really added to the stage presence, but never stole the show from Brown - it was a wonderful connection and the chemistry between the two during their duet in the second half was one of the highlights of the evening. I was grinning by the end - I'm a big fan of the man, but don't own his entire works (which will soon change...) but every piece was entertaining. There was only one moment where I wanted to die, and that was during the excruciatingly long improvising during one piece (can't remember which), which I guess stems back to because of Chris Vale's 6 minute drum solos now means I can now only handle 30 second sections. He played 'The Old Hills of Home' which was tha besttt. Another awesome highlight was his showcasing of a newish song he'd written called 'Caravan of Angels', which involved us singing at the end to join in. He joked that we weren't allowed to sing with sharp 11ths and so on and gave the reasoning "These particular angels don't sing jazz chords". It was my favourite song of the night and was just too cool for school! =D He even finished off with an encore from Urban Cowboy, which I cheered at.

So after my fiasco with forgetting the Parade CD, I got outside and managed to be the first person to get in line for an autograph. YAY. He came out and said hello and I said hi, could you please sign here - and I mumbled about how I was gonna stick it in with my Parade soundtrack. He smiled (and thought YOU CRAZY, BOI!*), signed, and I said I had a great time and thanked him again. YEY.

This was this weeks book task - to commit a violent and sudden motion with the book. We chose the library as the perfect location for such an event. Filmed by the lovely Bonnie, of course.

 

Keen for the rest of uni too! Goodbye until tomorrow!