Dum Dum Dum Dumdum Dum DUM!

*Title to be sung to the opening riff of 'Smoke on the Water'*

Yesterday was the much-awaiting event (for a few people anyway!) of the gig at Labyrinth of the band 'The Plenaries', formerly known as '70's band 'Smog' - they re-named themselves to be more environmentally friendly!

The Pea and I had been invited to be the backing vocalists of this band, through Edward Mercieca who is the bass player and one of the vocalists, a mere week before yesterday's performance so, one and a half rehearsals later (by Pea and me, not the band - they had been rehearsing since last November), we were a bit nervisssssss about the outcome.

But we really needn't have worried! The band played absolutely marvellously, and Pea and I didn't suck hehehehe - in fact, loads of people came to tell us we sounded great! The sizeable crowd was fantastic, made out of cronies, family and friends. They were all clapping, screaming, singing, jumping up and down and basically having a really great time especially during songs like 'Mony Mony', 'Come Together' and, of course, 'Smoke on the Water'. In short, it was a blast! Even a couple of professional musicians said the band was great!

For a detailed account of the gig from one of the lovely members of the audience, go to Maltagirl's website - she even has a short video clip... tres cool!

And, by the way, yesterday's gig was also the venue for a historic first-time meeting between Maltagirl and UK-based blogger Toni Sant who flew down to Malta just to see the band (he didn't really!) It was really nice seeing him after all these years!

Anyway, it was a fantastic evening and, hopefully, one which will be repeated sometime soon!

And the tank top saga endeth...

For those of you who were wondering (!) a couple of days ago, my hubby managed to fix our new tank top instead of the one that flew away - I am so proud of him as he (and I) can barely manage to hammer a nail in a wall without destroying said wall.

Oh, oh oh - the new bathroom arrives in April and work should start on its installment right after easter - can't wait for it to be all over as am already dreading the dust and mess that will ensue... oh well, I suppose all of this will be worth it for a decent bathroom!

Rock on

The Pea and I have been roped in to do backing vocals for a gig on Saturday with a band which includes Edward Mercieca on bass guitar - yeah! So, if you have nothing to do (hehe!) and like a good dose of rock, you could do worse that come on down to The Labyrinth in Valletta on Saturday at about 8.30 / 9 pm. Should be a blast!

Ouch!

I strained my right thumb and wrist playing too much Solitaire on my I-pod so it hurts when I type... do these things only happen to me?!

*groan*

Full House

Woke up this morning and saw grey skies once again... and there I was, fooling myself that the recent good weather was here to stay. Oh well! Honestly, looking at the grey-ness of it all starts my day off badly. I feel lethargic and fed up. On the contrary, when I woke up to blue skies last week, I felt so much better - SAD strikes again I guess hehehe!

Anyway, my life this week has been fairly uneventful except for one thing. My house. Now those of you who own/live in their own house (ie not mum's and dad's) will no doubt understand and sympathise with me over what I am going to say: why is it that you can spend weeks, even months, not even thinking about your house/flat etc and then everything happens to it at once?

In the past week or so we've had:

1. a blocked drain, which resulted in my nieghbour (with whom we share the drain) having overflowing drainage in his garage (yuk!). He tried to fix it but couldn't and left me to stand guard over the open drainage hole in front of my gate while he went to find a drain-fixer or whatever you call them. For an hour. In the freezing cold. While I had a bout of the 'flu. After this blessed hour, when I no longer had feeling in my extremities, I said "To hell with it", removed his tools and went inside to make a cup of coffee, hoping no human or animal would fall into the hole in the meantime. Some 10 minutes later my neighbour came back with the news that he couldn't find anyone to help. However, the next morning, he did get someone who did fix it, bless him. At a cost of course, but hey, it was worth it to be able to use the loo again.

2. last summer, we put up a trellis to stop one of our cats jumping over to the other neighbour's roof and being eaten by their big dog (lovely animal but she can't stand cats). Halliha li after a while, the cat realised that he could squeeze himself through the trellis holes anyway, which recently ended up in an excrutiatingly embarrassing situation featuring my cat, their dog, me in my slippers, the neighbours and a broken flowerpot - but that's another story. Anyway, after the last bout of hurricane-like winds that we had, the hubby found 90% of the trellis smashed and lying on the floor of the roof. Great, now we have to spend even more money to get something sturdier by next summer.


3. also , part of the top of the water tank flew away, which means that we had to buy another one which will be delivered next week. It also resulted in an overflow of water gushing into the roof, shaft and road late last night, which I only realised after a while when I heard dripping water from the upstairs bathroom window. The hubby managed somehow to fix it temporarily by climbing up there with a torch at 10 pm. Can't wait for that water bill!

4. I've decided i need a new bathroom as (1) my loo doesn't work anymore and I'm fed up of rushing upstairs like a maniac everytime I need to spend a penny and (2) the old bath is getting rusty - eeeeuuoow! So we went round some bathroom places and visited the bathrooms fair and we found a pretty good deal for a nice, simple bathroom. Please note that the words 'a pretty good deal' does not mean that it was cheap but that it was the cheapest we found of stuff we liked, as we were getting incredibly extorbitant quotes from some places and it would have actually been more worth it to build the damn thing ourselves. Anyway, we obviously need a plumber/tiler, so we got a quote (and are waiting for another one). Geez, I really missed my calling in life - I should've sooooooo become a plumber. I nearly fainted in shock when I got the quote. And apparently, it's NORMAL! I might have to take out a loan to pay it off...

When you are looking around for your own place to live (and Maltagirl, I'm looking at you pupa!), they don't tell you these things... they don't tell you about drains and water seepage and pipes that have to be broken and gotten rid of and, even more annoyingly, people who ring your bell at some odd hour in the morning on Sunday and ask you to sponsor them for some reason or other...

Maybe I should write a manual - 'Things you wanted to know about having your own place, but were afraid to ask'!

I do, I do, I do...

I had promised myself that I would not blog about the Maltasong festival held yesterday... but I can't help myself! Years ago (2 years running I think), I had written a detailed account of the festival on Maltamedia and I remember that both times, what was in my head had to be vastly edited before I put it down on paper... or I risked being ostracised by the whole music community here hehehe (at the time, I was more 'involved' having done backing vocals at the festival twice - once for Leontine and another time for Georgina, where we came third - fun!)

Anyway, I am not saying that the festival has no redeeming features - for me, highlights have included Ira, any song sung by Chiara (but as far as I'm concerned, she could sing 'Baa Baa Black Sheep', and I'd still live it) and one memorable opening performance by a bunch of really talented kid dancers (I think they were like mini-YADA or something). Low points have included the awful stilted presenters and their truly ugly costumes, song songs which shouldn't even be graced with the word 'song' and some hideous clothing worn by the singers themselves. But more of that later.

Here are some points I made in my head re: last night's show:

Positive:

1. I really surprised myself by not hating the presenters. The script was no Oscar winner for best screenplay or anything by at least it made sense and did not try to rely on gimmicks, even though it was a tad patronising at times. The presenters themselves, Eileen and Josef, were courteous and polite, especially when Eileen explained why two songs had to be repeated due to 'technical difficulties'.

2. A couple of songs/singers, I really liked - Ali & Lis and Fabrizo mainly. Oh, and Manuel surprised me by being more likeable (to me) than usual and I liked his song too. The hubby also liked Kevin Borg, whom I though had a great voice and good song too. I think Pamela has an amazing voice and her song sounded like a Disney one, a la 'The Lion King', but I didn't think that it was a suitable Eurovision song. Same with Trilogy's song. Nadine Axisa's 'Waves' was also lovely, but again, more suited to easy listening in a wine bar I thought!

3. Having Lou Bondi on the show was funny... although he did try to be too funny during his intro, I thought. Perhaps he should have stuck to playing the guitar. Ray was funny too I guess, but his sketch was way too hamallu for my tastes and for, I think, such an occasion. I'm sure most people at home lapped it up though...

4. The Beatles tribute, was well-sung, if a bit long. And of course, Chiara's singing was great, as usual.

5. The professionalism of Ali & Lis when they were onstage and Alison had no sound... they just went on with a smile. I know they broke down backstage and... who wouldn't? But on stage, they and their dancers were very professional - as it should be.

Erm, that's it for the positive.

And now for the...

Negative

1. Some 'songs' should NEVER have got through. You probably know which ones they are. 'Nuff said.

2. The clothes most of the singers wore were apalling. Now. I'm no fashion expert but even I know that you should wear stuff that maximises your assets and minimises your flaws. For example, unless, you are a beautiful, tall, rail-stick model (or Nadine Axisa), you shouldn't wear tight shiny fabrics, too-light colours or garish ones, tight halter necks, empire style waist dresses, cheap fabrics that stick to your skin etc etc, unless you actually want to look bad! And some of the hair styles... maaaaaaa! Look, nobody we saw up there is exactly an ugly person in 'real life'- far from it. but some people looked as if they had deliberately made themselves looked as ugly as they could. Or maybe it's just me. As for the men, maybe it is time that someone - anyone - tells them that a shiny white suit is not the epitome of high fashion.

3. Like Maltagirl, if I hear another 'd' instead of 'the', I am going to scream and/or offer my services to help them learn how to speak/sing English properly! For a fee of course hehehe!

4. The 'technical problems' - for goodness sake, I know that problems invariably rear there ugly heads during live transmissions... but, do they realise how unprofessional it makes them seem?!

5. Those horrible intros to each song/singer. Basically, PBS just got some old footage and edited bits together - the people shown milling about the market, and Valletta etc were in short sleeves for goodness' sake - and the clips were really boring. It is obvious that they just used some archival footage. Is it possible that they could not afford to shoot some new material?! Arg!

I'm sure there were other things in my head but I've forgotten them (please bear in mind that I haven't had my morning coffee yet), so off I go!

UPDATE: Just thought of some more comments (it's amazing what a coffee or two can do!) so they are up there in italics.