Wasting Time
Ale, music and enjoying life.
Savages Leeds Cockpit (upstairs venue) 28th July 2012
Here’s one I posted on the Burning Up Time forums which I stumbled upon – Don’t think Savages had played many gigs at this point and I also don’t think they had any material out.
It’s not very often I’d drag myself along to a gig for a band that I know fewer than 3 songs for (which is not as bad as it sounds as the band have yet to release their first album). But last night I’m glad I did.
Arriving at The Cockpit in Leeds last night me and Lammy (along with most of the staff it would seem) were very confused as to what was going on – The bottom room was rammed with a lot of punters watching 1 of around 5 bands appearing on the 2nd stage in the venue. I knew there was a “venue” upstairs that holds about 150 people max but just assumed the Savages would be in the larger room.
Luckily within about 5 mins we both realised (with the help of one punter showing us his ticket with 5 different bands billed!) we were in the wrong room. A quick stroll upstairs and there we were with around 30 other punters and the smallest stage you’ve probably ever seen. We’d missed the support act but we weren’t too bothered. Watching the venue fill up (probably got to around 100 strong in the end) the Savages made an appearance through the dry ice looking quite intense, and with a touch of 80s goth I guess. They came across very well, the lead singer is quite the performer her voice had a very strong edge to it, the bass sounding very tasty and has touches of early Joy Division kicks of most of the songs and drives them along nicely. The 2 songs I did know “Husbands” (think Patti Smith’s “Horses” but performed by The Slits) and “Flying to Berlin” coming across incredibly well live.
British Sea Power – Louth Town Hall 16th July 2016
British Sea Power again following on from yesterday’s fun.
A wooden owl is passed from the front of the town hall down to the crowd. The crowd graciously receive the owl and it is held aloft and passed down to the back of the town hall. The owl is eventually passed back to the front and it is placed back to it’s original spot. Music is playing.
Two bears are wandering freely throughout the crowd. People stop to pet the bears whilst the music continues to play. Some people from the crowd hoist themselves higher onto a stage and begin cheering and waving.
After the event some of us, including key members of the earlier event, retreat to a nearby drinking establishment and watch ladies dancing and undressing whilst we drink many drinks of ale and wine. Pictures below capture the event.
Azure App Service Deployment Slots
With the Standard App Service service plan upwards you get 5 Deployment slots to play with. These are essentially staging slots that can be used to progress from Dev to Pre-Prod to Live. There’s lots of guidance online about deployment slots but here’s my personal experience and headlines….
1. Add new deployment slot name accordingly (i.e “Pre-Prod” or “UAT”).
2. When prompted select the “Clone” option to clone all existing settings from your Production App Service.
3. You now have a self contained instance of a site with a separate Azure url.
4. Change Application Settings from Production accordingly. Any settings that are only specific to that slot need to be ticked as a “Slot Setting” and changed with the deployment slot setting value.
5. Download the Publish Profile. Should any developers here have the Production publish settings they can now be blown away from any local dev environments. Obviously being a quality developer, you won’t have pushed these up to Source Control right!.
6. Fire up VS then Build and Deploy site using new Publish Profile. (This step should be automated – see below).
7. Check your new deployment slot site url and wave at your site.
Your New Route To Live/Production Deployment
Click “Swap” to swap deployment slots from Pre-Prod to Production. You can always switch back should you need to (if you’ve configured correctly and tested!).
One Click Deployment?
The above used in conjunction with a one click deployment script gives you a very quick and simple route to Pre-Prod then an even quicker deployment to Production. App Service deployments now take seconds. In a further blog post I intend to outline how Powershell can be used to interact with Azure’s APIs.
Custom Domains?
As mentioned in point 3 above, each deployment slot is a self contained instance of a site. Therefore, you can assign it a custom domain just as you would with the production site. Once you’ve assign your domain’s CName and confirmed tie the domain up in Azure by navigating to your deployment slot, heading to “Custom Domains and SSL” and enter the custom domain you intend to use (i.e www.uat-mysite.com). There’s no propagation to worry about here and domain should be allocated in seconds.
British Sea Power – Hebden Bridge – 15th June 2016
British Sea Power playing a packed sweaty Hebden Bridge Trades Club we’ve been here before right? It had all the ingredients for a classic gig and it didn’t disappoint.
Darren Hayman
I usually turn up too late for the support band but I made the effort to see Darren Hayman who I’ve caught live a few times before. When we arrive Darren walks past and waves his wristband at my wife thinking she works there as she’s stood near the door waiting for me. Pretty funny. He’s supporting BSP on a few dates promoting his “Thankful Villages” album. Interesting concept, great songs. He ends with the classic “I Know I Fucked Up”.
British Sea Power
It’s always a bold move for a band to try out unreleased new material and BSP tonight are testing out 9 new songs. That’s pretty much half the set.
There’s some interesting working titles for the new songs “Barry The Goldfish” to which Yan declares “this one’s about my goldfish”.
The crowd are very receptive considering the setlist but the new songs all sounding really good. If this is anything to go by then the new album is going to be another classic.
There’s enough classics to keep everyone happy. “Larsen B”, “No Lucifers” and “Mongk” get the crowd moving.
The chaotic “Rock In A” moves us into the encores with “Skua” ending the set.
Long Division Festival – Wakefield 11th July 2016
Long Division is in it’s 6th year and the 6th time for me. Every single one of them being incredible value for money and a great mix of bands both young and old.
Arriving at Wakefield station at around 3pm and a quick step next door to the Orangery for wrist bands then greeted by 11 (count them!) ducklings with their mother crossing the road. Awwwww!
Quick pint in the newly opened Wakefield Beer Exchange and we’re on to the first venue the Snooty Fox (I saw Cowtown play as part of Long Division festival here a couple of years ago). Mammoth Penguins take to the stage to a packed humid! venue. “Propped Up” and “Strength in my legs” are the only songs of theirs I’m familiar with but on the whole they’re sounding particularly good live.
Straight out of the Snooty Fox and round the corner to the splendid Wakefield Theatre for Her Name Is Calla. The theatre seems an ideal venue for them as their lush sweeping songs ring throughout the venue. The punk in me battles against their songs that seem to weigh in at around 10 mins on average, but there’s a real spirit to their performance only hampered by the occasional crying baby. Never really witnessed that at a gig before. One minute a baby is crying to the left of me, the next there’s one wailing at the back of the venue. On leaving the venue I notice that some band members have brought their babies to work.
We check back in to Wakefield Beer Exchange for some much needed decent ale. Then we’re on our way to the chapel for Pictish Trail. The last time I saw them was at a British Sea Power Krankenhaus and they were jolly good fun then. Today a stripped back Pictish Trail are very entertaining and performing in the chapel adds to the stripped back semi-acoustic performance. Most pleasant!.
Food stop, Mexican.
Onto Warehouse 23 and Red Stripe looks like the best of a poor offering at the bar. We make our way to the front and await the arrival of Bis. Sadly Bis don’t look in any danger to selling out the venue this evening, which is probably not helped by England’s first game of Euro 2016 taking part at the same time (not to mention Malcolm Middleton and Los Campesinos! taking to the stage at the same time at other venues nearby). Not to worry, Bis deliver the goods even without their drummer. Faves “This is Fake DIY”, “I’m a Slut”, “Kill yr boyfriend” and “Kandy Pop” (of course) get things moving.
Brother John Robb and his Membranes over at the Unity Hall (witnessed them previously here at Warehouse 23). Thankfully, the England match on the big screen is firmly switched off to be replaced with celestial imagery to coincide with their recent excellent Dark Matter/Dark Energy album. John and co giving it a high octane performance as usual.
Back to Warehouse 23 to witness the last band of Long Division 2016 and it’s Brix and The Extricated. I’ve seen Brix and co live a fair few times now since they put the band together a few years back and they’re always entertaining. Fall faves with a bit of Adult Net and some new stuff (all sounding incredible, looking forward to the new albums).
The time seems to fly by and before I know it I’m in a taxi home.
All this for less than £25! Long may it continue.