Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

The second night of Killing Joke at the Ancienne Belgique featured a shorter set than the first night. In spite of what was advertised, Pandemonium wasn't played in its entirety. Notable missing tracks were Millennium and Jana.

On the other hand, songs from periods I hadn't expected to hear were played, such as The Hum, which was the evening's opening salvo.

Although the evening had been advertised as featuring songs from the band's original singles on the Island label, Turn To Red was the only song played from this era. A shame, as I would have liked to hear Are You Receiving?

There was also some overlap with the previous night's set list. Love Like Blood, Eighties, Change, Wardance, Pssyche and other perennial favourites were hammered out with verve.

Highlights of the evening were Change, Communion and an absolutely mental rendition of Whiteout.

The set was shorter than the first night, disappointingly so, because I was still anticipating the rest of the Pandemonium album and the Island singles. Like a meal at a top restaurant, I cleaned my plate and was left wanting more.

The sound, once again, was excellent. The audience were animated and admirably fulfilled their symbiotic duty to create a great atmosphere. I left the gig soaked in a mixture of beer and sweat, most of it other people's.

After a quick drink, I picked up my bags and began the drive back to Amsterdam. I pulled up into the drive at 01:35, just in time to find Lucas yelling in pain and vomiting. My poor son was feeling very much under the weather.

By the time I'd had a shower, it was 03:30 and I was spent. A day of walking around Brussels in the rain, followed by a Killing Joke gig and the drive back to Amsterdam had used me up.

It was good to get back home, but equally satisfying to have made the trip to see Killing Joke. I would be regretting it now if I hadn't gone.

Instead, I find myself wishing I could slip away to attend the London concerts, but I'm needed around here and would miss the children too much, anyway.

Sarah got a kilo of Leonida's finest wares out of it, too. And just to ensure no-one was left empty-handed at the end of my visit, Eloïse got a new jig-saw puzzle and Lucas a cuddly toy.

Killing Joke last ruled the roost last night.

The Ancienne Belgique is a good venue, a fact that becomes evident before you even reach the main hall. You can dump your belongings in a locker downstairs, so there's no need to queue for a cloakroom ticket.

The various tour T-shirts were mostly sold out in my sizes, so that made the decision whether to buy one much easier. I have a wardrobe full of T-shirts, but it's an old habit of mine to buy a shirt from each gig that I go to, just so long as the shirt lists the tour dates.

In the main hall, the support band were playing. It was some metal combo, but they were rather good. At the very least, they served to indicate that the venue had good sound.

The Joke took to the stage at 21:00, looking ready and in the mood. Without any ado, they launched into Requiem. The sound was crisp, clear and very, very loud. Around me, younger members of the audience, who weren't even alive when this material was first released, hastily shoved yellow ear-plugs into their head. The youth of today...

The onslaught of the eponymous first album continued all the way through to Primitive. There were scarcely any gaps between the songs for the band to draw breath. The sound really thundered out of the PA, turning an unremarkable studio track like Bloodsport into an earth-trembling, chainsaw guitar wall of sound. You didn't have to dance: the earth moved under your feet.

With no pause for thought, What's THIS For...! continued the aural bombardment. Somewhere in the middle of it, Jaz announced "a change of plan", at which point the band unexpectedly treated us to a stomping version of Eighties. I couldn't tell you why, because it's a track from several years later.

It was interesting to hear tracks that I've never heard live before, such as Madness and Who Told You How? And not just that, but also the fact that they were being played by exactly the same line-up that had originally recoded them.

During the encore, Jaz said a few words about dearly departed Paul Raven. He said that Paul would "always leave the band when the money ran out; like always!" and added, "But he would always come back if you waved more money at him." Finally, he concluded "the world is a darker place for his loss".

This was the prelude to another deviation from the period being aired tonight, as the band launched into what is perhaps their best known song, Love Like Blood.

Change was a particular highlight of the evening for me. I haven't heard it sound so good since seeing the band in San Francisco a few years ago.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to tonight's gig, which will see the band fast-forward about thirteen years to the Pandemonium period. Apparently, that's the band's favourite album, but it's also the album that Youth returned to the fold to record. Besides that, it's one of my favourites, so it's going to be a real treat to hear the entire album played live.

It's been silent on the blogging front of late, as you may have noticed.

You may thing that means not much has been happening, but in fact, the opposite has been true. Something had to give, so there wasn't any time to blog.

I have plenty to write about, but still no time to do the actual writing.

This entry is also being squeezed in before I head off to Brussels in the car for a two night stint of Killing Joke at the Ancienne Belgique.

The band aren't coming to Amsterdam this time and, well, this time it's a bit special. With the recent sad death of bassist, Paul Raven, the band have reunited with the original line-up that hasn't played together since 1982. That means Youth on bass and Paul Ferguson on drums. Apparently, the idea of the reunion was hatched at Raven's funeral.

Not only that, but they'll be playing their first two albums tonight in their entirety. Tomorrow, they'll play the full Pandemonium album, plus the singles recorded for Island in 1979 to 1980. So, it's not your usual band standard mix of songs through the ages, plus the requisite crowd-pleasers. No, this time, we get the seminal early material through to 1981, plus the band's favourite album, Pandemonium.

I'd rather not have to spend a night away from home -- I miss my children if I'm away from them for more than about four hours -- but, like I said, this is a bit special. I also had to ask myself, 'Which bands would I still make the effort for? If not for the Joke, then for whom?'

I once missed a red-eye flight to Texas, where I would have attended the 2003 Ruby conference. Instead, I stayed on at Slim's in San Francisco to see the end of Killing Joke's performance there. That made it a pretty expensive ticket, but in return, it was a hell of a gig.

Besides, there are few people as angry as Jaz Coleman when he's on stage. Aged 48 now, he still really means it. As I hurtle towards the grave myself, I don't notice any diminishing of my own levels of bile and gall. In Jaz, I find a kindred spirit and I like the hellish noise his band makes, too; once described by Paul Ferguson as "the sound of the earth vomiting".

And so I head to the Belgian capital this afternoon for a night of cathartic spleen venting. And then a good night's sleep, a walk through the old city, a few photos, some good food, coffee, and a second night of purging oneself in the company of like-minded people.

At least, I hope they'll be like-minded people. They may just be a bunch of dispassionate, complacent zombies, the like of which I've suffered before at concerts on the European continent.

But with the US about to elect another misguided fool to continue the flow of billions in military aid to Israel and prolong America's self-assumed role of policeman to the world, imposing its own peculiar brand of pseudo-democracy in the pursuit of self-enrichment, there's still a surfeit of things to be angry about in the world.

So, perhaps now, more than ever before, the world needs Killing Joke. I know I do.

When Fenella asked me why the dining-room had no music source, it suddenly occurred to me that my Bowers & Wilkins wall-mount M-1 loudspeakers, lying in a box in the cellar, didn't have to be mounted on the wall. They come with attachable base plates to allow them to stand on a desk. How did I forget that?

I had a spare Sonos ZP100 ZonePlayer and some speaker cables lying around, so everything I needed to set up a new zone in the conservatory was right under my nose. With that realisation, music was soon playing in that part of the house.

The sound was wishy-washy, though; we needed a subwoofer. After dropping Fenella and her children at the airport, I drove back via RAF in the Rijnstraat and purchased a Quake Q108 unit. We already have one of these in the living room and I've been pleased with the results.

The extra Sonos zone has been good for filling the vacuum of silence created by the departure of Eloïse 's cousins and their mum. Their visit was short and sweet, but long enough to make a large impact.

Still, the silver lining behind the cloud of this farewell is that we'll no doubt see them all again quite soon, because they returned to England to live in January. I daresay we'll see them again before the summer's out, either here or in England.

Anyway, it's nice to have the new zone in the conservatory. It serves the kitchen and the dining-room, too. The speakers in the living-room were just too far away to benefit the other rooms.

We had a total of six zones in the old house. This house now counts four. We were unable to reuse the built-in speakers situated throughout the house, so every room that I want to add music to has to have external speakers. As such, I'm postponing each purchase until we actually intend to put the room in question into proper use.

The conservatory zone becomes the first wireless zone in the house. I have only one network socket in the area and it's currently being used to patch a phone through to the VoIP router in the stair cupboard downstairs. I may revisit this set-up later, but the range seems OK and I was able to listen to an Internet radio station for a prolonged period this afternoon with no drop-outs.

We do get a lot of pleasure from the Sonos system. I'm very glad we purchased it.

As the sun in Iceland rises later and later each day, so, too, do we. After hauling ourselves out of the hotel at 10:30, we headed for Kaffi Hljómalind and had a modest breakfast of toast and macchiato. Eloïse played with the toys available in the café.

After that, we visited various baby shops, purchasing, amongst other things, a new pair of purple boots for Eloïse . She first tried size 24 and liked them so much, that she wasn't about to take them off at our insistence she try a size 25, lest we whip them out from under her and she lose them!

For lunch, we stopped for soup in a bread bowl at Svarta Kaffið, now blissfully smoke-free. This formed a welcome top-up after breakfast.

Outside, it was still dry in spite of the rain forecast; the temperature was pleasantly mild, too. We continued our baby shopping and then piled into Mokka on Skólavörðustígur for the obligatory coffee and chocolate cake. We really love this place and it's been our favourite coffee shop since Kaffitár turned into a kind of Icelandic Starbucks.

Refreshed and refuelled, we next went to the Blue Lagoon shop, because Sarah wanted to buy a few lotions.

At that point, Sarah returned to the hotel and I ended up back at 12 Tónar, where I bought albums by Ólöf Arnalds, Múm and the debut album by Rökkurró.

Rökkurró's album, Pað kólnar í kvöld..., was playing when I entered the shop, and it was instantly likeable. I soon discovered that the band would be playing that evening to celebrate the launch of the album, so I made a mental note to attend.

Dinner was at Café Oliver, which served me a huge and extremely tasty burger. Perhaps this establishment could serve as a future venue for a Lunchops burger, as long as I can persuade my fellow ex-Google colleagues to make the trip. It's closer for them than Amsterdam, after all.

After dinner, Sarah went back to the hotel to put Eloïse down for the night and I walked down to Organ on Naustin for the Rökkurró gig. Support was from My Summer As A Salvation Soldier, which was a fair bit better than the artist's stage name.

500 Kronur and a support band later, Rökkurró took to the stage. They're an interesting outfit, a five-piece whose lead singer appeared to be invisible until I realised she was sitting down on stage at her cello. Apart from the strings, there's an accordion and the familiar mix of bass, guitar and drums, plus the occasional use of a xylophone.

Rökkurró make a very pleasant noise indeed. Do catch them at home or abroad if you get the chance.

Yesterday, we all drove down to the Flemish capital, Antwerp. The reason was Lisa Gerrard's concert at the Koningin Elisabethzaal. We'd rented two hotel rooms for the night, one for us and one for Sarah's folks, who would be performing babysitting duties during the concert.

Unfortunately, the rain had set in by the time we arrived and, apart from a couple of dry spells, it pretty much continued throughout the afternoon.

Even more unfortunately, I somehow managed to leave our concert tickets on my desk in Amsterdam. Don't ask me how, because I'd laid out a pile of things, including the tickets, the night before; precisely so that no essentials would be forgotten the next morning. Somehow, I managed to bring all but the tickets: no minor detail.

Luckily for us, I'd bought the tickets directly from the venue with a credit card, so after calling them in a rather panicked state, I was relieved to discover that they would be reissued to us at the door. Phew.

We spent the afternoon walking around Antwerp, stopping for delicious friet and later hot chocolate. Dinner was at some Catalan place, after a couple of others we tried turned out to be closed. That turned out to be a good decision, as they had delicious tapas and some nice colouring materials to keep Eloïse happy.

And then to Lisa.

What can I say? Of the three times I've seen her this year, this was the best; and that wasn't just thanks to the front row tickets I had managed to score from the box office, although they definitely did help.

'Dreams Made Flesh' was positively stunning and Lisa imbued the piece with more emotion than I can remember seeing from her in many, many years. The set was completely rearranged from the order of performance at Rotterdam a couple of weeks ago; to its credit, I might add. If I'm not much mistaken, a new piece had been inserted and one other new piece removed.

Very unusually, Lisa spoke to the audience during the encore about the sad state of the planet's environment. She urged us all to do what we can to improve the situation and invited us to pray with her during 'Host Of The Seraphim', which closed the show.

I was left with a warm glow by the performance. Lisa had seemed completely at ease on stage, her efforts to gain poise at the microphone stand notwithstanding. Having Sarah with me to see Lisa for the first time was nice, too. She enjoyed herself, but it wasn't the near-religious experience that it always is for me.

Outside, it was no longer raining. We walked back to our hotel, pausing to look through the windows of the numerous antique shops and art galleries in the Wolstraat.

Back at the hotel, Eloïse had refused to go to sleep for Oma and Opa. We ushered her back to our own room and went to bed soon afterwards.

All in all, this was a very successful overnight trip to Belgium.

I keep forgetting to mention that we took Eloïse during autumn half-term to see the children's musical, Nijntje Op Vakantie at the Meervaart.

I think I enjoyed it only slightly less than Eloïse , for whom I purchased a copy of the CD containing the songs. Unfortunately, every time I try to break the silence in the home by turning on some music via the Sonos, Eloïse demands that I play Nijntje Op Vakantie instead of whatever I was planning to play. And she's really quite insistent in that convincing way that only a two-year old can be, sending one running straight down the path of least resistance.

Anyway, if you're in The Netherlands and Nijntje Op Vakantie is coming to a venue near you in the next six months, you could do worse than to take your toddler along. We all had a very good time and it was fun to expose Eloïse to a live performance.

Yesterday, I made the unpleasant journey by road to Rotterdam to see Lisa Gerrard at the Schouwburg on the opening night of her latest European tour. It's only about 75km to Rotterdam from here, but the traffic makes it feel like a lot more. Still, having a nice car with TV, music and arse-warming seats goes a long way towards numbing the pain.

We hadn't managed to come up with someone who could perform the bedtime duties with Eloïse , so I went without Sarah and met up with my ex, Jo, to attend the gig.

Lisa played a good selection of old and new, including some unreleased material that will hopefully find its way onto a future release. The set had been rearranged, with a few new pieces added, since Lisa was last here in the spring (when she played in The Hague).

High points were Host Of The Seraphim, Sacrifice, Sanvean and the Michael Edwards rendered piano version of Dreams Made Flesh. Yes, I do prefer the older material, but I like the new stuff, too. Music is like wine and cheese, you see. It gets better as it gets older, because the listener no longer just hears a piece of music, but attaches memories and feelings to it over time. New music can never evoke the same feelings, but that new music will, of course, also start to age. That's how it works for me, anyway.

After the concert, we went for a Greek meal just outside the Schouwburg. I was ravenous, as I'd had no dinner prior to she show.

The concert was so good that I risked Sarah's wrath by purchasing a tour T-shirt. There's a wife-imposed ban on T-shirt purchases in this household, because I have so many already, but I couldn't resist having the wearable souvenir of this concert.

Sarah still hasn't seen Lisa Gerrard perform live, but she'll get her chance a couple of weeks from now, when we head down to Antwerp for an overnight trip with the in-laws. Sarah's folks get the questionable honour of babysitting the smallest, most demanding member of the family, while her parents make merry to the dulcet tones of Lisa at the Koningin Elisabethzaal.

Speaking of Sarah's folks, they turn up here Saturday morning.

Paul Raven died last Saturday, aged 46. He will be missed.

Lisa Gerrard is coming back to Europe in the autumn. After the Den Haag (The Hague) concert in April, I thought that would be my lot for this year, so the news comes as a real treat.

The only Dutch gig scheduled this time is Rotterdam and this constitutes the first night of the tour. A couple of weeks later, she'll be performing in Antwerp, which presented itself as a fine opportunity to make an overnight trip over the border to Flanders. We can go to the zoo in the afternoon and enjoy the charming cafés in the historic centre. Who knows, maybe we'll even add an extra day and go to Brussels or something.

My one day photography course planned for last Saturday ended abruptly before it had even begun when I had to rush to the aid of a sick friend. Happily, the Volksuniversiteit has agreed to allow me to move my enrolment to the next instance of the course on 1st June.

I'll be starting a separate three-part digital photography course this coming Friday and am looking forward to getting stuck into that.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to attend Lisa Gerrard's concert at the World Forum in The Hague. It was a fabulous concert, but I was slightly preoccupied during the show, on account of the fact that just a few minutes before the concert had been due to start, another car had collided with mine in the venue's underground car park.

In his enthusiasm to secure a parking space being vacated by a car on his left, the driver of the errant car slammed into reverse and shot backwards without looking and before I could sound my horn. A couple of seconds later, he rammed my stationary vehicle with the towing hook of his vehicle, thereby knackering my number plate, its holding frame and the grille behind.

The car is due to be fixed next Wednesday and shouldn't cost more than €300 or so, which -- barring any anomalies -- the other party's insurance will be paying. The other driver immediately admitted culpability and hopefully won't have a memory lapse later on.

Speaking of the car, its ECU (Electronic Control Unit) was flashed with new software a couple of weeks ago in an attempt to fix a problem with the keyless starter mechanism. It seems funny to have one's car flashed, but cars contain an amazing amount of computing technology these days, so it makes sense. I suppose it's just because I still tend to think of them as being more hardware than software, but these days, they pretty much contain equal measures of both.

Geoff has been here for the last few days, which has been fun. He headed back to Dublin for a few days on Monday afternoon, but will be back at the weekend in time for Koninginnedag. That's going to be a good laugh.

What else? Well, we've finally joined the ranks of the responsible refuse disposers and purchased a paper shredder as a precaution against identity theft. Yes, yes, we should have done this ages ago, but at least we've finally done it now.

I mentioned the other day that I would like to see a Web controller for the Sonos music system to supplement the remote controller and the (to a non-Windows, non-Mac user) largely useless desktop controller software.

Well, it tuns out that an inventive user has done just that, and written a Web-based controller in Perl. It actually works as advertised, too, although it's not quite as functional as either the remote controller or the desktop controller. Still, I can now manage the Sonos from the comfort of my laptop, which -- let's face it -- is where I spend a lot of my time.

How it works is quite clever. You install it on any system that can run Perl, so I put it on our MythTV box. When run, it starts a Web server on port 8001. Pointing a browser at the server yields a menu that allows one to select a UI and various plug-ins. Once that is done, one can access most Sonos functions, including the all-important ones, such as selecting zones, playing music and altering the volume.

On the back-end, a UPnP control point listens for UPnP events and talks to the Sonos boxes. With my scant knowledge of UPnP, this has the appearance of happening rather magically.

I'd like to see Sonos take this piece of software and continue its development. There's clearly a need for a controller that one can manage from one's Web browser.

A few days ago, we had a Sonos system installed in our house. Six ZP100 ZonePlayers make for six so-called zones in the house, one per major room on each floor, and we have three CR100 controllers, one per floor, to control the music in that floor's two zones.

Each zone allows separate music to be played in that zone, meaning that we can have six different audio sources booming out around the house. In practice, we're unlikely to do this.

One nice feature of the system is the ability to link zones, so that the same music can be played, for example, in both the living-room and the sitting-room. Then, if someone else wants to use one of those two rooms, you just drop one of the zones from the link group. This means that you can add zone B to zone A, then drop zone A from the group, which effectively allows you to pass music sources between zones. Very clever.

The zone system is very sensibly implemented and it's therefore possible to control any zone in the house from any of the remote controllers. So, I can be in the living-room on the ground floor and turn on music in the guest room two floors higher up. The logical extension of this idea is setting alarms, so that music can be automatically be made to play in any zone at any time. Again, the simplicity of the software makes this child's play to configure.

After a session in the listening room of the hi-fi shop (where Sarah was close to vomiting and Eloïse was going mental to go home: not a terribly relaxing environment for listening and making well-informed decisions), we finally settled on a mixture of KEF, Bowers & Wilkins and Paradigm speakers for the house. The living-room has the KEF pillar speakers, whilst the sitting-room has B & W speakers hung in the corners. A REL Quake subwoofer completes the picture in the sitting-room.

The first floor rooms already contained built-in speakers, left behind by the previous owners, so we simply hooked up the two ZP100 ZonePlayers to those. We think they're B & W, but we're not sure. They sound pretty good; good enough for bedrooms, at any rate.

The second floor has the Paradigm pillar speakers in the guest-room. In the office, I simply hooked up the ZP100 up to the line-in socket on my computer's sound card, which plays through some fairly decent Klipsch speakers. Most of the time I'm in there, it's late at night and I have to listen on headphones, anyway. I may get better speakers for the office later on, if the need arises.

The ZP100 in the sitting-room is wired over Ethernet; the other five operate wirelessly over an AES-encrypted protocol on top of 802.11 (which Sonos calls Sonosnet). The single Ethernet-wired ZonePlayer is an installation and usage requirement, as it functions as an Ethernet bridge, allowing the other units to request and be assigned IP addresses over DHCP. The ZP100 units also conveniently feature a four port Ethernet switch on the back, which allows one to network other devices. Depending on whether the ZP100 unit in question is wired or wireless, it functions in this capacity as either an Ethernet or a wireless bridge.

The system is able to automatically check for new firmware versions and install them. It's also able to automatically refresh its list of Internet radio stations, which is great for having new stations added and updating the URLs of stations that move around. I really like systems that are able to perform self-maintenance in this way.

The whole system appears to works very well. After a few days of use, I have few complaints. The only ones that spring to mind are:

• Internet radio stations must support WMA or MP3 streams to be usable by the Sonos system. RealAudio streams, for example, don't work. By way of contrast, the MythMusic module of MythTV can do this.
• Only SMB network shares are supported for accessing one's music collection. Samba to the rescue.
• Whilst one can shuffle the play order of songs, there's no smart mode, whereby songs are picked pseudo-randomly, weighted according to the number of previous plays. Again, MythMusic has this feature and it's great for picking songs out of a hat, but with a bias towards the music that one prefers.
• All the features and functions of the remote controller are also available via the so-called desktop controller, which is a piece of software that runs under either Windows or MacOS X. This makes it very inconvenient for me to use and I would like to have seen a Web-based controller operating via the Ethernet-wired ZonePlayer.
• The person who installed the system had already flashed the various units to the latest version of the firmware at his workplace. Unfortunately, this required him to register the system using his own name and e-mail address. Surprisingly, after calling Sonos, it turns out to be impossible to later rectify this situation without performing a reset of the entire system to the factory default state. On the plus side, having everything registered in my own name doesn't actually appear to matter very much.

All in all, then, it's an impressive system with a lot of flexibility and it beats installing PCs all over the house.

Above, you can see Rockbox running on my iAudio X5 player. The code was taken directly from today's CVS and cross-compiled on my laptop for the Coldfire CPU. The album art patch by Nicolas Pennequin was also applied. This allows one to configure the WPS (While Playing Screen) to display a bitmap image related to the track currently being played. The main purpose of this, obviously, is to allow one to display an image of the album from which the track is taken.

I needed a quick way to get album covers onto my X5, so I wrote some Ruby code that uses my very own Ruby/Amazon to pull album images from Amazon. Basically, the approach is to take one track from each album directory and inspect the Ogg Vorbis tag of that track. From this, artist and album title data is derived. Then, an Amazon search is performed to find the album in question.

Some albums are available exclusively on either Amazon UK or Amazon US, so I first try to pull the album cover from Amazon UK and resort to the American site only if I can't find it there.

The album cover images arrive from Amazon in JPEG format, but Rockbox needs BMP files, so I use ImageMagick to convert from one to the other and then save the image as cover.bmp in the same directory as the album.

The Ogg Vorbis tag data isn't accurate or specific enough in some cases to locate the album on Amazon. Occassionally, the album isn't even available from Amazon, which obviously also results in a failure to locate its cover art. In the end, approximately 75% of my albums end up having a cover image retrieved. It remains to be seen how many were mismatched with the wrong album!

I've had no time to hack together my own WPS file for the X5, so I'm currently using Markus Haselboeck's boeselhack_v1 theme. It's pretty nice, I think you'll agree. Having a small image of the album cover on the screen really is a nice touch and gives the software a very professional edge.

Here's a full photo of the X5 running Rockbox, just to place the above in context.

Back in July of last year, I wrote about the open-source replacement firmware project called Rockbox. For a year now, I've had it running on my trusty iRiver iHP140 and, in that time, have seen the code grow to maturity.

For a while, though, the iHP140 has been feeling cramped. I really needed a 60 Gb player, but no suitable player existed. Most of my music collection is encoded using the Ogg Vorbis codec, so any player that can't handle that immediately falls out of consideration.

For the last few months, I've had my eye on the 60 Gb Cowon iAudio X5, but was put off by reports of its suffering from poor firmware. I consequently decided to hold off until Rockbox was ported to the device.

Well, Rockbox played an MP3 file for the first time two months ago and development has been forging ahead since then. There's actually less work to do than one might imagine, because the X5 uses the same Coldfire CPU as some of the iRiver players, amongst which the ever-faithful iHP140. Most of the work, therefore, is in the bootloader, making the remote-control work, etc.

Once I saw that Rockbox was coming along in leaps and bounds, I decided the time was right to complement my iHP140 with the purchase of a 60 Gb X5, so I ordered one from MP3shop.nl, along with a remote control, a case and a desk cradle. They turned up on Friday, as did our friend Geoff, so there wasn't any time to play with them. I plugged it in, flashed the firmware to version 2.10, started an rsync of my music repository and then went to bed.

On Saturday, I found some time to compile Rockbox and its X5 bootloader. I applied the dual boot and album art patches, merged the official Cowon firmware with the bootloader and then reflashed the device. Finally, I unzipped the Rockbox files onto the hard drive. Sure enough, after holding down the REC button whilst turning on the device, the familiar boot screen of Rockbox scrolled by. I tried a couple of the plug-in games, satisfied myself that everything was working, then went to bed again.

Rockbox is still at quite an early stage on the X5. For one thing, the power management work has scarcely started, so a battery charge lasts only a fraction of the time that it does when running the official firmware. That's a major problem, so I'll be booting into the official firmware until the Rockbox team gets the power management under control.

Still, it's great to see it already running and know that great things are just around the corner. Rockbox is so good, that it's hard to imagine considering any DAP for purchase that would remain unsupported; especially one that didn't support the Ogg Vorbis codec by default.

I think the Rockbox project is destined for great things. The goal of the project is of great widespread interest: to create high-quality open-source firmware that supports all of the major codecs and fully utilises the power of the hardware of each platform on which it runs. It's made the iHP140 a much better player than it ever was with the official iRiver firmware, for example; and it was a great player to begin with.

With the iPod port firmly underway, I predict that the project will soon explode and achieve widespread recognition and acclaim. An iPod with decent battery life and the ability to play Ogg Vorbis files would be a player worthy of consideration, perhaps. Of the people who already own one, I suspect that enough people will try Rockbox and like it for the necessary word-of-mouth advertising to rapidly ensue.

I forgot to mention that Jo and I went to see the Sisters of Mercy at the Melkweg last Sunday. That was the fitrst time either of us had seen them since the late eighties, when we both still lived in England.

It wasn't really the Sisters that we used to worship, though. Oh, Eldritch is still there, but his long hair and hat are gone. In fact, all of his hair was gone; he's shaven-headed these days. The shades were still in place, though. Has anyone ever seen this man's face? He can still suck his way through a pack of cigarettes on stage, too.

Dr. Avalance was still there, too, as invisible and reliable as ever, thumping out the beats. No bass player was present, but there were a couple of good guitarists, apparently Chris May and Ben Christo.

The Sisters haven't released a record since 1992, although they keep threatening to do so. They played quite a bit of new material, so a new record would be nice.

Apart from the new material, the set contained a few surprises. The Sisterhood's Giving Ground was performed, for example, along with a lot of material from Floodland.

The omissions were surprising, too. Nothing at all was played from First And Last And Always. And, if I'm remembering correctly, the only older tracks played were Anaconda and absolutely storming versions of Alice and Temple Of Love, the latter of which was the part of the encore.

For the first few minutes of the gig, I wondered whether I'd be able to say afterwards that I had really seen the Sisters Of Mercy, because it was almost impossible to actually see them. There was so much dry ice pouring off the stage, that visibility was down to a few metres. Occasionally, the shades of Eldritch, contrasted against his gaunt complexion, would slide into focus from within the fog, and then sink as enigmatically back into it.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed myself, I must admit. I used to worship this band, but had lost touch with what their progress since I moved to Amsterdam in '91. After the Under The Gun single in '92, they pretty much disappeared; or so I had thought.

The sound was very good and Eldritch still has great stage presence. I'll definitely go to see them again the next time they're in town. Let's hope there's a new album before either Eldritch or I pass away.

Tonight was the last night of my stint following Dead Can Dance around California.

We had time to kill during the day, so we went to San Diego Zoo in the afternoon. Some of the highlights were the reptile house, the various apes, some big cats and a lot of tortoises.

When we got back to the venue, the band were in the middle of the soundcheck. Those who think of Lisa as otherworldly would have been shocked to witness her singing in plain black clothing, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap: not very ethereal. Brendan was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt.

Geoff and I had dinner and then settled down for the show. The sound was great and the crowd was a good one, spirited but respectful. Brendan was in a particularly good mood tonight, joking with the audience at regular intervals throughout the concert. He seems to get more jovial with each passing day. Saffron stood out as especially vivacious and energetic, with Brendan really giving it his all tonight.

After the show, I attempted to go backstage with my VIP pass, but was stopped by one of the security guards, who informed me that my pass didn't entitle me to enter the backstage area. At that moment, Lisa very conveniently emerged and told the bloke that I was a friend of hers, so I was allowed through.

Inside the backstage area, we hung out with Niall, Simeon, John and Michael. Lisa left quickly, but Brendan was there with some of his family.

Around midnight, we shook hands and parted company. The band are driving back to L.A. tonight and flying to Mexico tomorrow morning for the next date of their North American tour.

For me, however, the tour has come to an end. Tomorrow, we drive back to L.A., where Geoff will drop me off for my flight to Amsterdam, before continuing alone back to Mountain View. I should have arrived back home by around 13:00 local time on Thursday.

I've had a fantastic time. Not only was each of the concerts a special and memorable occasion, having backstage passes for each gig made for a truly unique and personal experience. I shan't forget these four evenings in a hurry and I'm indebted to Niall for putting us on the guest list each night.

As much as I'd like to stay and catch more shows, I can't. All good things, as they say. Besides, I'm missing my daughter and can't wait to hold her in my arms again and watch her giggle with glee.

Last night's orchestral concert at the Hollywood Bowl was excellent, but marred by the inconsiderate and selfish behaviour of a handful of individuals. I even ended up losing my temper and threatening a couple of them. Get the whole story if you care to know why.

The backstage party was a lot of fun, though. I mostly hung out with Niall and Simeon, but had a good conversation with John Bonnar about his involvement with the band. Sadly, he doesn't think the band will ever perform together again after this tour, but you never know, of course. Who'd have thought that the band would even reunite for this one? Similarly, he's doubtful about the prospect of the band ever recording together again.

A few words had with Lisa and Brendan ended the evening on a high note.

And now, we're in San Diego, just fifteen miles from the Mexican border.

The day started in Los Angeles with an atrociously bad breakfast at IHOP and half an hour spent at the impressively large and complete Amoeba Music on Sunset Boulevard. After that, we embarked on the drive down to the tail-end of southern California.

Once we'd dumped the stuff in our room, we continued south to San Ysidro, where we parked the car and took a coach across the Mexican border to Tijuana. It was my second trip to this border town. Last time, I had a girlfriend with me, but this time, there was nothing to discourage the droves of massage and sex show peddling doormen from ad infinitem offers of gorgeous girls, each assuring me that the competitors could offer only old and fat women and that the true beauties awaited us within their establishment.

I was curious enough that I would have ventured inside (purely in the name of journalistic investigation, you understand), but Geoff was reluctant to explain to his wife that he had beheld naked women, even if his intentions were not to be aroused. Sadly, the lovely ladies of Tijuana therefore remain unbeknownst to me.

An amble around town and a decidely mediocre dinner with a one time Ethiopian refugee turned Ohio night-club owner completed Geoff's low-brow introduction to Latin America. We headed back to the bus station. Thankfully, no grief awaited me at the US border control as I reentered the country.

Tomorrow night is my fourth and final Dead Can Dance concert of this trip. I don't have to tell you that I'm looking forward to it.

The second Dead Can Dance concert in Oakland was every bit as good as the first.

Saltarello has never sounded better and Dreams Made Flesh stood out as a particularly spirited rendition, as it did the night before. Other personal highlights for me were Rakim and Severance, with its new hurdy-gurdy virtuosity at the end.

Brendan rehashed his jokes from the previous night, which had already been used in Seattle and perhaps even earlier. Time for some new comedic material, perhaps.

I managed to obtain a set-list from this show, so I now know that Lisa's new song is called Compassion. Yamyinar has made way for this in the set and was also left off the recent Best of the 2005 European Tour CD, so I suspect it has fallen from favour with the band.

The set-list was as follows:

1. Nierika
2. Saffron
3. Compassion
4. The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove
5. The Love That Cannot Be
6. The Lotus Eaters
7. Crescent
8. Minus Sanctus
9. Saltarello
10. The Wind That Shakes The Barley
11. How Fortunate The Man With None
12. Dreams Made Flesh
13. I Can See Now
14. American Dreaming
15. Sanvean
16. Rakim
17. Black Sun
18. Salem's Lot Aria
19. Yulunga
20. Severance
21. Hymn For The Fallen
    

    After the show, Geoff and I went backstage and hung out with Niall and Simeon, two of the band's percussionists. A couple more down-to-earth guys you couldn't wish to meet. Brendan was there, too, but we were so busy talking to the other guys that we didn't look for an opportunity to grab a moment with him.

    Soon afterwards, we adjourned to what is seemingly Oakland's only open pub after 23:00 and spent a couple of hours there. Shortly after 01:00, Simeon and Niall had to go back to the tour bus for the drive to L.A., so we shook hands and arranged to try to meet up in Hollywood on Sunday.

    As Sunday nears, my anticipation of the Hollywood Bowl concert is mounting. It's going to be a real treat to see and hear the band be accompanied by a 45 person orchestra; something really special and unique and even more of a night to remember than the two so far in Oakland. As usual, my expectations are high.

Geoff and I drove up to Oakland last nigt for the first of two Dead Can Dance concerts at the Paramount

As someone who attended two of the European concerts earlier this year, I have to say that Dead Can Dance were in superlative form last night. The band seemed tighter and more polished than they had back in April; not that there was anything wrong with their performances back then, of course.

I spoke to Niall after the show and told him my thoughts, wondering if the show I had just witnessed had seemed better merely because I was still in the moment of it all, whereas the shows from back in April had sunken somewhat into my memory.

Interestingly, he agreed. He said that the band was much tighter now than in Europe and that Brendan had spent a lot of money on improving the sound of the band on stage. Clearly, the European dates had acted as great preparation for the North American dates and the current line-up of the band is rapidly distilling into its most sublime form.

The new songs had evolved in small but significant ways since the European concerts. There were subtle variations, some cymbal where there had previously been none, and the arrangement of How Fortunate The Man With None had been changed slightly at the point where Lisa sings along. Lance now joined in, too, which I don't think was the case earlier.

A new song was played last night that wasn't played on the European leg of the tour, but I didn't get a set list, so I don't know its name. I'm not sure which song had been dropped from the set in favour of this one, either.

Lisa was her usual serene self, but Brendan was conspicuous by his sense of humour and generally jovial demeanour. He seemed to be enjoying himself more than I've ever seen him in the past.

The only new merchandise on sale was a grey version of the hooded sweater. The prices of the various items seem to be much cheaper than in Europe.

The version of the programme on sale was the same as in Europe, i.e. with many of the North American dates appearing incorrectly. I had wondered if they would reprint it.

In just a few more hours, we'll make the drive up to Oakland again for the second night's concert. Needless to say, I can't wait.

It now looks as if we won't leave for the drive down to L.A. until Saturday. The concert isn't until Sunday, anyway.

Whilst browsing around, looking for a new version of the firmware for my iRiver H140, I chanced upon Rockbox, which, in its own words, is Open Source replacement firmware for the Archos Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio MP3 players.

What that description fails to mention is that Rockbox is also in the process of being ported to the iRiver H1x0 series of audio jukeboxes. The code is still in alpha state, but this comparison of features in the original firmware and the Rockbox firmware makes for impressive reading.

I was intrigued enough to give it a whirl. One very slick feature of Rockbox is that it turns your iRiver into a dual-boot system. If you depress the Record button whilst turning on the system, it boots the original iRiver firmware instead of the Rockbox firmware. That's handy to get access to the FM tuner, for example, which still isn't implemented in the Rockbox firmware.

Another nice feature is the very fast boot time, which is around 5 seconds, comparing very favourably with the original iRiver firmware boot time of about 20 seconds. There's also the oft-requested feature of truly gapless playback, which is nice for ripped DJ mix CDs, amongst other things.

Other cool features are some trivial games and demons (Mandelbrot, Snake, Patience, etc.), the ability to customise the main display, by using a so-called WPS (While Playing Screen) template. This basically allows you to design how you want the main screen to look, including title and artist information, battery life, etc. It's incredibly flexible, even allowing you to scroll items and alternate between multiple items per line.

Here's a sample .wps file with the resulting display on the iRiver:

· %s%?it<%in. %it|%fn> · %s%?ia<%ia|%d2> · %s%?id<%id|%d1> %pc/%pt %?pp<[%pp/%pe]|> %pb %?It<Coming up in %pr:|%acRetrieving data> %s%?It<· %In. %It|%?Fn<· %Fn|%acfor next song...> %s%?Ia<· %Ia|%?D2<· %D2|> %s%?Id<· %Id|%?D1<· %D1|>> %?It<%?pn<· [%pn]|>|%?pn<Playlist: %pn|>> %pm %acBattery: %bt (%bl) %fc %?fv<%ffHz| %ffHz> %?fv<%fbK VBR| %fbK>

Rockbox offers a large choice of fonts to use on the display. In the above photo, you can see the Atadore font.

Rockbox also has support for interesting features, such as crossfade and replay gain, things completely lacking from the official firmware.

There are a few glitches in the Rockbox firmware and I've managed to crash my player a couple of times, but it offers enough niceties that I think I'm going to stick with it from this point forward. And, when I need the FM radio or something else not yet supported by Rockbox, it's trivial to boot back to the official iRiver firmware.

If you have an H1x0 player (or one of the other supported players), have a look at Rockbox. It'll breathe new life into an already great device and set it even further apart from the iPod.

It arrived! I've only played four of the concerts so far, but the quality is outstanding.

I can't wait for the North American tour in September.

More Dead Can Dance tickets went on sale earlier this week, so I now have tickets for the Hollywood and New York concerts. Those join the two nights in Oakland and one in San Diego that I had already purchased.

The Hollywood Bowl concert will feature backing from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, which should make for a phenomenally unique gig. I can't wait for that one. According to Brendan Perry, who I spoke to backstage at the London Forum concert in early April, the New York concert will also feature a full orchestra, but I haven't seen that mentioned anywhere else yet.

I'm still not sure how the logistics of all of this are going to work. We'll have a new baby in tow and will likely be coming from Europe at the time. Who will babysit? How will we get around? Will I even feel like doing all of this travel once I'm a new dad? Will Sarah?

Well, we have the tickets now. If we ultimately decide that the prospect of two itinerant weeks in the US is just too overwhelming, we can always resort to selling them on eBay.

Otherwise, we're already set to see Dead Can Dance a whopping five times during their North American tour: a very exciting prospect. Once tickets for Boston go on sale, I plan to add those to the pile, too, bringing our total attendance to six concerts.

If you're interested in picking up a CD of one of the recent European concerts, your time is running out. The limited edition CDs of those concerts are almost sold out, with Madrid the only concert still available. These CDs should start shipping soon. I can't wait.

I had so much fun during my recent jaunt to London for two Dead Can Dance concerts, that the lovely Sarah told me I could go to some of the North American concert dates happening in late September and early October this year. The only reason I need spousal permission for this is that we could very well be living in Europe by then, necessitating yet more transatlantic travel and time away from our as yet unborn baby.

Lest she change her mind, I wasted no time in securing tickets for both nights in Oakland, plus the concert in San Diego. Tickets for Los Angeles should go on sale in a few weeks, which will give us a nice little holiday along the Californian coast. You see, I bought tickets for both of us, so Sarah will get to accompany me and finally see the band perform live.

The little 'un will be with us by then, of course, so that means he or she will be in tow for this trip. I'm not sure how we're going to find a babysitter in each town, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I'm prepared to have to deal with this tricky problem in order to see Dead Can Dance perform a few more times. At the Los Angeles and New York concerts, the band will be accompanied by a full orchestra, so those should be very special occasions, indeed.

We'll probably also try to catch the band in New York and Boston, which will make for a total attendance of six concerts on the North American tour. Bliss! I can't wait.

Well, I suggested that the atmosphere at tonight's concert at The Forum would probably be very different to last night's at The Barbican and I was not wrong. The setting was much more intimate, with people able to clammer at the foot of the stage, mere centimetres away from Lisa and Brendan as they performed.

Tonight's sound was very crisp and clear; on a par with last night's, I'd say. However, the sound of the band was far from being the only sound perceptible to the ear. Just about every kind of unwanted noise you can imagine intruded upon tonight's performance.

Two bars within the auditorium itself ensured lots of background noise from the clinking bottles being served to customers. Amusing shutter sounds from digital cameras were anything but amusing in the context of a Dead Can Dance concert. The occasional mobile phone beeped as it received an SMS message. People chattered in the back of the venue, blissfully unaware of the level of white noise they were creating throughout the auditorium. Other people indignantly shushed the noise-makers, creating yet more kerfuffle. Finally, to top it all, plastic beer cups would occasionally be scrunched underfoot by someone. Only the sound of breaking glass could have been more jarring.

The level of background noise was very offputting to me, but didn't seem to bother the band at all. The Wind That Shakes The Barley was, I felt, all but ruined, but Lisa soldiered on as if there were no audible distractions at all. It's a great testament to her powers of concentration.

The set, if I remember correctly, was identical to last night's. The new songs are definitely starting to grow on me and I look forward to hearing them on the live CDs when they are released.

Brendan has definitely changed a lyric of American Dreaming to refer to a girl who is not American, but I still can't discern which adjective he's now using to describe her. Presumably the current love of his life is no longer an American.

As was the case last night, the band gelled together very well throughout the set. The timing was spot-on with no problems at all.

After the last song, the band clapped and thanked the audience a little more thoroughly than last night. After all, it wasn't just the end of a concert: it was the end of a tour. Brendan made a grateful gesture with his fist as he parted company and it was all over.

After the show, Niall invited me upstairs for the after-show party, where I was fortunate enough to exchange a few words with both Brendan and Lisa. I'm happy to be able to report that Lisa was looking much more well than after last night's concert.

Brendan told me that there are currently no plans to record any of the new material in the studio. I asked him if he'd been put off by the degree of background noise, but he said that they had deliberately opted for this more intimate setting, knowing the consequences of their choice. Ideally, he'd like to marry the respectful attention that a seated venue naturally demands of its audience with the intimacy of a standing venue, but he feels this combination is impossible. I would have to agree.

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the entire evening was the loving embrace that Lisa and Brendan gave each other when Lisa had to leave the party. It was touching to see them say goodbye to one another.

And that's it until the North American tour. All of you who are able to attend won't be disappointed, I'm sure.

Thanks to Lisa, Brendan and the other band members for a couple of excellent concerts these last two evenings. May there be many more!

The foyer of the venue started to fill up quite early on, at about 18:00. The audience was fairly diverse, with the requisite number of aging goths, a youthful post-Gladiator discovery contingent, and people somewhere inbetween.

The merchandise stand immediately started to do brisk business, selling out of a number of T-shirt sizes. Vouchers for the concert CD were flying over the counter and I'd be surprised if any are left for sale on-line afterwards.

I bought a programme, took my seat and read the biographies of the band members with whom I was not yet familiar. Brendan and Lisa had included messages to the audience in the programme. Rather than address the audience directly, Brendan had chosen to quote the lyrics of one of the new songs. Lisa's message thanked