The Wildhearts Review

I attended The Wildhearts’ gig at the Legends club in Newcastle on the 28th September. I had seen them before half-a-dozen times so I mostly knew what to expect: Four hard-working Geordies playing the type of riffs normally associated with thrash metal coupled with layman’s lyrics about love, loss and getting drunk. I attended with my Dad, him being the man who introduced me to them in the first place, and by the looks of things I wasn’t the only one. The Wildhearts have not enjoyed mainstream success often, but they do have the benefit of very loyal fans. Seeing as they started releasing albums nearly twenty years ago, the majority of the audience could be described as ‘Dads’.

The band, having released yet another new album the week before, decided to split the set into two sections. The first half consisted of the entirety of said new album and the second half devoted entirely to their enormous back catalogue. This made for a en enjoyable experience (as a long-touring band they are likely desperate to insert new material into the selection of over-played hits they have accumulated over the years, but they also cannot do so with the audience ignoring the new songs and crying out for the oldies. This strategy was successful). This also meant the audience was polite, yet still loud, during the first half. I found this odd, reacting this way when you know what’s going to happen, as if the majority of the crowd didn’t know what to expect from the band in the first place. Ginger (Lead vocals and Guitar) posted his own review on the band’s website:

“Songs are met, initially, with a stillness of quiet approval before a loud cheer of authentication as each song ends. It is, at once, both off-putting and comforting.” (http://www.thewildhearts.com/2009/09/29/same-old-newcastle/)

Even the URL is ugly. I thoroughly enjoyed the gig and I made sure to shout so much that I could not talk properly the next day, so I disagreed with this opinion (even though Ginger is entitled to it). It occurs to me I am reviewing Ginger’s review of us but he started this pretentiousness by rarely touring his home town so I think that’s fair.

I would recommend this band to anyone who just wants to sing and cheer and be merry with complete strangers and to get entirely lost in the mass riffage without worrying about the front man’s odd tendencies from time to time. I would also recommend the venue for Dads and people who cheer politely.

Finally - Final animation

It's taken longer than we thought, but here is the final animated film edited to the recorded music.

I'm on with getting short documentary about the project completed and sorting DVD designs and covers. This should take a couple of weeks and then we will finally have the finished thing - finally.

One Night in an Old Church, Surrounded by Horns...

We arrived at Wolsingham Parish Church with plenty of time to do a recce of the area. We used this opportunity to find the nearest toilets (a mere five minute walk away) and examine some of the more legendary tombstones in the graveyard.

Equipment was set up, programs were folded, orders were taken for food, hangovers were dealt with and two unwitting members of 'His Majesty's Sagbutts & Cornetts' were interviewed. They discussed the beginning of the band, what tonight meant for them and how much their cats looked like Hitler.



The evening eventually commenced with H.M.S.A.C playing a set (I'm not sure if that's the correct term for it, but you know what I mean). Good stuff (I forgot to pick up a program so I can't tell you what they played). Nick gave his little speech about the evolution of the instrument that looks like a rhubarb again. I think he carries that thing around with him so he can talk about it at any opportunity. Filming was dealt with by myself and Ben, and photography by Mark and Danny. Getting consent forms from people was dealt with by James, who should have been paying more attention when the jobs were being given out. Only two people declined to give their permission and they were roughly in the same area, so that wasn't a huge hindrance.

The audience seemed to get the idea that the time to stretch their legs was after H.M.S.A.C's set, which proved that those programs were a waste of bloody time. After everybody got settled it was time for myself to make a complete mess of things with my speech. I'm usually good at them (honest), but I was out of practice and had to cover for somebody else. I received a sympathy clap (or maybe it was a 'Thank God it's over' clap) and everybody went back to being professionals. It shows how objective this blogpost is when I say the worst thing about the night was myself.

The film was finally shown to the excited throng to coincide with the new piece of music composed by Andy Jackson. I think I speak for the rest of my group when I say how suprised/relieved we all were at how well it turned out. The quality of the music was something we were all a bit worried about, seeing as we'd had nothing more than an awful MIDI file (imagine a mobile phone ringtone. From 1995) to work with. To compare the music from what we had worked with to the piece played in the Church was like comparing Epic Movie to The Godfather. The video (VDJ'd by the lovely Racheal Clarke) fit very well with the music, and only the end of the video seemed too fast for the music (I didn't notice this myself, but I was told by one of the financers of Museumslive! afterwards how much THEY had noticed it). The sound of applause from the audience told us that they liked it, and that truly was worth the past few months of work and meetings and being ill and everything else we had gone through.



Not that it was all down to us, as The Stanhope Silver Band partnered up with the H.M.S.A.C afterwards to play even more music. By this point I was spent, so Mark kindly took over filming as Ben had left, but everybody else continued to listen and show their appreciation.

After we had clapped until our hands hurt, some nice people were kind enough to be interviewed regarding their response to the performances. It's not bragging when you have the evidence to back it up, everybody interviewed loved it. We lost the takings, found them again, got told to get out by the assertive Church woman and the night was done.

My apologies if I have forgotten to mention anyone or recant something else that happened on this historic night, but this is all from memory. My memory of the event was a good one though, so kudos to everybody who performed, helped out, enjoyed themselves or just turned up.

If brass bands aren't as popular as they once were, somebody needs to tell Wolsingham this quickly as they haven't been told.

Nearly finished

Video is almost there with Ben busy rotascoping final link scenes to make good transitions between drawn footage, Flash animation and live footage. Going to try some mixing together on the old mixing desk now to see how that is going to work.

Here is an earlier version of Ben's rotascoping which he is now adjusting to help it fit with the rest of the film.

Ahoy there Danny here, I'm just trying out my blogging skills really but here is one of my bootiful pictures i've been working on. It was taken at low force if i remember rightly. Anyways your opinions are welcome and appreciated so for now Danny out...

Another fine update!

Behold, rejoice and maybe even clap your hands for the above video!

As the finished video is to be a combined version of both animation and live footage, we thought it best to give the world a sneak peak of just a sampling of the usuable footage we have gathered so far from shooting around the Dales.

It works quite nice by itself, but the hardest challenge will be seeing how well it interwines with the music and the animation.

At the moment it works well, as we can all look back to a few weeks ago and think "wow, remember when it was that sunny?"

Venue & swirling cornets

Here is Wolsingham Parish Church, where the concert and film will be played. I went to have a look at what is going to be the best way of setting the screen and the video projector up. Space is going to be pretty tight with a big band and a screen in there!

Also been playing around with some imagery for the start. Swirling cornet anyone?


Only 22 days to get this finished. Yikes better stop waffling on the blog and get some work done.