It's 2.30 in the morning and I'm buzzing! I've just got in from what has to be the best gig of the year!

Tonight my mate Rob & I headed off to Reading to see The First Night Of The Progs, featuring three tribute bands - The Logical Tramps (Supertramp), Perfect Alibi (Pink Floyd), and Boot Led Zeppelin (err... you should be able to work that one out yourself!)

First up were the Logical Tramps - I never considered myself a fan of Supertramp, but I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the tracks I knew.

They managed to squeeze in a fair few Supertramp hits, including "The Logical Song", "Breakfast in America", and my favourite "Crime Of The Century".

Next up were Perfect Alibi, who were the main reason we'd gone to the gig. Once again they were absolutely fantastic - I've seen them three times so far this year and I think tonight was their best performance yet.

The only drawback to their performance was the fact that Frankie wasn't available to perform - not that I'm favouring any member of the band, of course... ;)

Last on were Boot Led Zeppelin - in full costume (ie, open shirts!) they gave what seemed to me to be an exact copy of a Led Zep gig - they looked like them, they sounded like them, and they even referred to each other using the original band members names!

I've always like Led Zeppelin, but this band took my appreciation to an entirely new level - although I've heard a lot of their music, I never truly appreciated how much of a rock band they really were. Particular highlights for me were "Kashmir", "Since I've Been Loving You", and the marvellous finale, "Whole Lotta Love" - never before have I been at the front of a rock gig, moshing (albeit gently!) to the music!

It wasa brilliant evening, and all credit to the Reading Hexagon and Marvellous Festivals (and of course, the bands) for putting on a truly magnificent show!

More photos from the evening can be seen here.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I've just realised that, give or take a few days, I'm exactly half my Dad's age at this moment in time. I'm catching him up from this point onwards...

I've just got in from the best gig I've been to in years! Perfect Alibi were great when I saw them at Mr Kyps just over a month ago - tonight they were bloody awesome!

They wanted to put on a good show to celebrate their 15th anniversary and they didn't disappoint. They played 21 tracks (which may not sound many), but considering one track in particular is 17 minutes long, they didn't do badly at all! Starting off with one of my favourites ("In The Flesh"), they proceeded to entertain solidly for over two hours.

The girls (Carly and Frankie) performed a fantastic rendition of "Great Gig In The Sky" and received a huge round of applause from the audience, and that was followed by "Us and Them" - with images of World War I soldiers projected onto the screen, it was a very touching tribute on Armistice Day.

Of course, the band played "Another Brick In The Wall", along with other popular hits like "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". Kudos to Ricky Hearn on bass for singing lead on "High Hopes" too!

It was an fantastic evenings entertainment! Sadly I only had my camera phone with me, but more photos from the gig can be seen here. I can't wait till the next gig!

but it wasn't in a car.

I went out to Iford Golf Centre today with my Dad & my cousin, Tim - they're both keen golfers, whereas I'm not a fan of the game at all. The driving range however seemed like it could be enjoyable...

As you can see, Iford have an under cover driving range which was ideal, as it was raining quite heavily. We each bought a bucket of balls and found three bays next to each other on the first floor of the centre.

Last time I went to a driving range you had to manually place each ball on a tee, but here you pour your bucket into a hopper and it feeds one ball at a time onto an automatic tee - no bending involved whatsoever! Tim gave me a few pointers, but other than that I just whacked the hell out of each ball - it was great fun, and I actually managed to get some half decent drives in every now and again! I even bought a second bucket of balls, so I must have been enjoying myself...

It was a great way of killing a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, and very therapeutic. It's also probably the most fresh air I've had on a Sunday for a long time!

As I mentioned in my last post, Perfect Alibi are playing a 15th anniversary gig in Southampton. My mate Rob sent me text yesterday asking if we were still going, so I said I'd look at getting tickets booked over the internet.

I clicked on the "buy tickets" link on the Southampton Guildhall site and it took me here. The tickets are £15.00 regardless of where you sit or stand, so it seemed straightforward enough. I said I wanted two tickets and clicked through to the payment page... where I was told there was a booking fee of £2.25 per ticket.

Now, I understand that the ticket agency has to make money, but really... If I picked the phone up or turned up at the box office, I would have to speak to a real person (thereby costing the company money in wages and so on), but by booking online I'm doing all the work myself!

Anyway, such is life, so I accepted this charge and carried on through to the next page, which asked how I was going to get my hands on the tickets. I was given two options - have the tickets mailed to me by registered post (costing a further £5.00), or alternatively I could pick them up from the box office... for just £3.00!!!! I was gobsmacked! I was being asked to pay to turn up and collect tickets that I'd ordered myself! They've got to be kidding!

Today I had a word with a rep at work who works in the Southampton area - he's going to stop by the Guildhall and buy two tickets for me with cash - saving me at least £7.50... what a palaver!

I have just seen the most awesome tribute band ever!

Perfect Alibi are a Pink Floyd tribute band that I've been meaning to see for a good few months now. Tonight they were playing at Mr Kyps, so my mate & I headed off to see what they were like - and we were completely blown away!

The band have been together for 15 years now, and it shows - the music is absolutely spot-on. The lead guitarist has captured Dave Gilmour's technique exactly - now I know why I play the drums, I could never hope to play a guitar as well as this! The rest of the band were equally as impressive, however - drums, guitars, keyboards, sax, and the vocalists... well, they were belting the tunes out!

Rob & I were right in front of the stage, no more than two feet away from the band, and I think we spent the best part of 2.5 hours with permanent grins stuck on our faces! It was a pleasure to see the band enjoying themselves as well, they all looked as if they were loving every minute of it.

We're certainly going to see them again next time they're in Poole - they're even performing a special 15th anniversary gig in Southampton next month, so we're going to see if we can get to that, too!