I thought that the title of this post would explain everything but it doesn’t quite.
I took these photographs from my living room window last night at 10pm and they show the silhouettes of Glasgow Cathedral and The Royal Infirmary Hospital…
You May Also Be Interested In:
* Room With A View
* Larking Around Glasgow Cathedral (PART I) & (PART II)
* The Trongate, Glasgow
It’s really strange walking around the centre of Glasgow just now. Every so often you’ll hear the words “Dead Body”, “Zombies” and yesterday, I even overheard a wee girl say “Is this Judgment Day Dad?”.
It’s quite creepy.
The “World War Z” production has rolled into town!
For roughly 2 weeks, George Square will be doubling for Philadelphia as Brad Pitt films his scenes for the post-apocalyptic zombie flick “World War Z” and if you ask me, it’s one of the best things to happen to the city for a while. The streets are totally buzzing!
I live 5 minutes walk away from the set and I’ve been going down as much as possible. I can’t believe how quickly the Square has been transformed to look like Philly and we’re not just talking about putting a couple of American flags here and there either.
Painted road signs and markings have been removed and replaced with American signs, traffic lights have been pulled down and been replaced with (much cooler looking) ‘WALK’ and “DON’T WALK’ signs and streets have been renamed.
The really cool stuff happened a couple of days ago when a huge car crash was staged! Surprisingly, the producers of “World War Z” have no problem with the public getting up real close with their cameras most of the time and yesterday, we got to walk along the crash scene which was great because they actually had dummies lying dead in their crumpled cars and…actually, shall I just shut up and show you some of the the photos I took?
You should get yourself down to George Square and take all of this stuff in because in a matter of days it’ll all be gone.
Click HERE for a video of the car crash.
A few days ago I had the pleasure of working at The Kronos Quartet Concert in Hamilton Mausoleum.
As you may know, I’m not very good when it comes to writing reviews.
That said, I got asked to write a short review for our staff newsletter.
Here’s what I managed to string together:
The Kronos Quartet.
Hamilton Mausoleum.
13/05/2011.
Well, I was pretty excited about working at The Kronos Quartet gig at Hamilton Mausoleum.
I used to play on the Mausoleum steps when I was a wee boy and the place was always closed.
I never got the chance to see inside but Hamilton Mausoleum is the ideal setting if you like to pretend you’re Indiana Jones.
Anyways,
Tickets for The Kronos Concert were allocated via a lottery system because of the limited amount of space inside the building.
The lucky golden ticket winners and ourselves arrived at the masoleum (which was lucky because I had to direct the bus driver and I don’t drive) and it’s even more impressive on the inside!
It was actually really misty and cold inside which only added to the eerie atmosphere and Kronos played in the centre of a candlelit circle in the middle of the mosiac floor making great use of the masoleum’s 15 second echo.
– Apparently the longest lasting echo of any man-made structure in the World…World…World…World…
Add to that the dome some 100 feet above us and instantly you got the feeling that something special was about to go down.
I’ll have to hold my hands up here and admit that I’d never even heard of The Kronos Quartet before this concert but already, I’m a big fan.
Additional sets were performed by:
The Alim Qasimov Ensemble,
Ritva Koistinen,
Chris Stout & Catriona Mckay,
Tanya Tagaq,
Donald Shaw & Karen Matheson.
Again, it’s hands in the air time as I’d never heard of an instrument called a Kantele before but Ritva Koistinen played it beautifully and I may just save all my wages up and buy myself one of those.
As great as all of the artists were I have to say that throat singer Tanya Tagaq stole the entire performance for me.
I don’t even know where to begin.
The lights were dimmed real low and Tanya performed barefoot surrounded by candles.
All of the artists really made great use of Hamilton’s Mausoleum’s echo but none so great as Tanya Tagaq.
She ran around in circles growling like a caged animal and AT THE SAME TIME sang above her own growls with the voice of an angel.
How can that be possible?
She built and built on top of her own voice and with the aid of the echo, you could close your eyes and be convinced that you were listening to 5 seperate people.
Halfway through her performance, and with the masoleum almost in complete darkness she….HOWLED LIKE A WOLF!
It was REALLY LOUD! (And unexpected!)
Actually, I don’t think an actual wolf could howl better.
When that happened, I looked at the stunned faces of the patrons, the circle of candles and the mist above me.
For a minute, I was convinced that the patrons were worshipers!
For a minute, I was convinced that I was gonna turn around to find my colleagues with fangs and capes!
For a minute, I thought that The Concert Hall I work for had decided to offer up some of its staff as some sort of sacrifice to the Hamilton Mausoleum Gods!
It’s easy to get carried away inside that Mausoleum.
What actually happened was:
Tanya became human again and after some stunned silence, there was thunderous echo drenched applause.
At the end of this great concert a patron beside me leaned across and said:
“What a great job you have! Can you get me one?”
He obviously didn’t realise that Daniel O’Donnell is scheduled to ‘perform’ later in the year.
The Kronos Quartet in Hamilton Mausoleum goes right into my Top 10 of amazing concerts.
Note:
All through the concert I was watching the TV Camera guy operate a Steadyicam.
Those things are very cool!
I work in a concert hall and last month everyone got asked to put together a presentation about any upcoming event or concert. I’m not to sure why really.
Maybe it was to improve our knowledge of what’s going on at work. Maybe it was one of those team building exercises that just exist to demean you. I don’t know what the point of it was. It could’ve been a huge expensive waste of time. But it wasn’t.
Folk paired up and prepared their speeches which were to be delivered at the end of the day. Sean and I didn’t fancy the idea of writing a massive boring plug for a show. Our idea was: “Let’s pick The Ray Mears Show and build a fucking Ray Mears Danger Box!”
So that’s what we did.
What’s a fucking Ray Mears Danger Box?
THIS!:
Which opens out into THIS!:
Notice the amazing tent inside and the highly realistic grass detail on the sides! You probably don’t see the pictures of soldiers on the doors but that’s because they are wearing camouflage and it makes them invisible to the naked eye.
So that was last month.
The Ray Mears Danger Box just sits in work now being dangerous.
What to do with it…
It’s obviously professional enough to be mass produced making us instant millionaires but that’s just not our style.
Ray Mears is coming to Glasgow on October 13th.
I think it’s only right that I disguise myself as a crazy fan, get myself backstage and present him with The DANGER BOX!
Until then, I like to sit THE RAY MEARS DANGER BOX under my desk at work because it looks like it’s connected to the wires from my computer.
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