DSC_0126, originally uploaded by jellybeanz.

This time last year I was on the West coast of USA, enjoying two weeks of great shows. This year I went to Norway for Slottsfjell Festival, named after the tower around which the festival is based. Located at the edge of the oldest town in Norway, Tonsberg, it was a beautiful location for a festival. On one side of the hill was the lake, and the other side the houses in the town.

Half the line up consisted of Norwegian acts, some of which were apparently amongst the more popular bands in Norway. However, us, enjoying the sun a bit too much, took a more relaxed approach to listening to music. Musical highlights of the weekend included Annie (the only act we saw on the main stage), Lethal Bizzle performing to a mainly white crowd and dancing to Swedish band Slagsmålsklubben at the club afterwards on the last night.

After the Seattle experience last year and this festival this year, it seems like a music festival abroad is definitely preferable to something in the UK.

SANY0637, originally uploaded by jellybeanz.

I know I’ve said in the past that I would never go to huge gigs ever again, since a number of bad experiences in the last 12 months. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the type of people in the audience for Radiohead. It actually got so bad that our group had to move away from a group of particularly horrible group, who just seemed to have bought a ticket, to go and drink overpriced beer and yell along to the famous songs, even the ones that aren’t best suited to communal yelling, like Lucky.

It was a shame that the behaviour of the people around us ruined the rest of the show for me. So sadly, out of the three Radiohead shows I’ve seen (South park and Earl’s Court are the other two) this was the worst. This was of no fault of the band, in fact the set list were full of some of my favourite Radiohead songs, Nude, 2+2=5, National Anthem, Paranoid Android, and the lightshow and the displays were great too.

Maybe this is just a problem with London audiences and the current boom in live music, attracting people who are there just because going to gigs is the cool thing to do right now. Afterall, last summer’s Daft Punk show in Seattle was one of the best gig experiences and there were 5000+ people in the audience.

The whole of June and no update, I’d better explain what’s going on. Disappointingly June has been pretty sparse for shows, and those shows that I wanted to see coincided with my busiest week at work and my quick weekend away. Instead of spreading out my going out into the odd night each week, I squeezed it all into one weekend in Hamburg. From drinking outside the Golden Pugel Club to watching people of all ages enjoying the extended Saturday night in the Sunday morning fish market.

On return from Hamburg, I had my busiest week at work so far, and it took me another week to recover from all the excitement. And on top of all that, I am moving out of my current flat at the end of this month, so had all the stresses of flathunting and associated paperwork as well.

Last weekend was a brief return to music, with the open air shows of the Exhibition Road music day. I dragged myself all the way across London to queue for a ticket to the British Sea Power show, only to be 10 people too late in the queue. To make up for it, I had a great time watching and listening to The Listening Post and watching kids go mad on some cardboard boxes.

Saturday was rounded off by watching The Owl Project, Four Tet (apparently - didn’t see him on stage), Florence and the Machine and Late of the Pier in Hyde Park. It was pretty brave of the promoters to book an improvisation/experimental band like the Owl Project for an outdoor show at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. After them, the other two live acts (Florence and LoTP) were pretty bog standard and boring.