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I was basically shopping online for Red Curtain Trilogy DVD set today, something I wanted for my collection for quite a while… I am absolutely in love with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo And Juliet and Moulin Rouge (though haven’t seen his early work Strictly Ballroom yet), so £16 price tag seemed very lucrative to me and following my human nature which always wanna buy something on the weekend I thought it was the right time for it (my “weekend allowance” remained still untouched :).

The choice of e-shops was narrowed to two megagiants: hmv and Virgin, and not hesitating much I started the checkout with hmv. And then in the middle of the process I started getting sort of “Some sort of error. Please return in few moments” message. And this was almost the end for me as a client of hmv. Since Virgin offered pretty much the same price I was almost ready to turn my back on top dog and go to their rivals and it was literally the last moment when luckily for hmv, its checkout was up and running and I finished my order.

So, as South Park’s Kyle would say: “I’ve learned a lesson today”. With e-commerce until you have something totally different or significantly cheaper in your shop, your buyers will go to your competitors right the very second your website is down or something. There is no such words as “patience” and loyalty on the net. And i guess never will be.

Genre : Classic Acoustic/Alternative

Much-anticipated album. Ever since I heard his debut O, Damien’s music always has a special place in me. So here he is, the same Damien Rice. Almost the same. Still intimate, still delicate, still sad, still honest, just a bit more bitter, I guess.. I love gentle 9 crimes, Accidental Babies, i love overwhelming Rootless Tree and Me, My Yoke and I… For some reason this music makes me think, think about shortness of life, about things you will not be able to change, about what’s gonna be left of us. It’s so aimless sometimes..

I guess I love this sadness..

” Is that alright? Yeah…
Give my gun away when it’s loaded
Is that alright with you?
If you don’t shoot it how am I supposed to hold it..”

I get bored. Quite easily. And quite often. Bored with weather, bored with my jobs, bored with my clothes, bored with my look, bored with my everyday, bored with my life. So naturally i got bored with my website, ie portfolio. Though it served well and its minimalistic style appealed to many people I got soooo bored with it. Including the logo. So now logo goes to my portfolio but I’ve got a brand new identity.

So I did a slight redesign during my lunch break yesterday. But you know what? I was bored with it by the end of the day. So I revamped the site again :) finished late at night.. actually fell asleep on the couch where I was working and woke up at 3.30 in the morning because of the unnatural position of my head which eventually caused some neck pain. But I am quite happy now with my portfolio in the tones of greyscale. Shame though.. I wish I could have it completely sort of black and white :)

So couple of design changes are still to be done as well as I have to rewrite some part of the code to make it an absolute HTML. Soon. Probably. Hopefully.

Oh yeah yeah.. It’s Skrinda dot com.. right

So the second part of the “rock’n'roll gallery” is finished and open for public. And this time it is Kevin Max, a figure bigger than life, a rebel, an unique singer & poet, my huge inspiration and even a fashion icon.. Quite a lot for a single man, isn’t it? I have been following Kevin and his career since I got internet access :) so for around 8 years already. So you can imagine how excited I had to be to finally see him live. I guess the excitement would be even bigger if it happened, let’s say, 5 years ago, when we both were younger and a bit more enthusiastic, I guess, hehe… but this is something beyond my power so i was just enjoying the show.Well, as a matter of fact Kevin did not look very much excited during his session, may be because of a dull English weather or lack of true fans in front of the stage (which is quite a shame that younger generation does not really know the artist), but still it was Kevin Max himself, it was his distinguishing vocal, one in a million, it was his passion and soul of rock’n'roll. It was a “return of a Singer”. Respect to the Singer…

I also quite liked Kevin’s band, especially his guitar player, a “little prince” of whom I also took quite a considerable number of shots.

Unfortunately, no matter how i tried i did not manage to see Kevin personally and say “hi”, but was lucky to meet his boys and have a small chat with them. The last photo in the gallery serves as a proof of it :)

Updates in the Gallery. Finally sorted out some pictures from a September gig, where two of my most beloved bands were playing: Blindside and Kevin Max. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the line-up with both of them performing in the same night. So it was the right night for me. It was quite a low-key festival, and not too many people were gathered there, but that just gave me an opportunity to get closer to the stage with my camera, almost VIP place to shoot :) I took around 300 shots with my 12x zoom sony h1 during that night, which were eventually narrowed to 100 and something good ones, and around 20 best pictures.

So here they are: Blindside. I give you the rockers from Sweden. Ever since their Silence (the album, not the debut one) back in 2002 they remain on the top of my hard rock play list and always were a huge inspiration for my own music. Actually there are five swedish guys I love : my man Andreas, designer i work with and four members of this band. And they rock! The performance was amazing, exactly what I expected from them. Full of drive and passion. And this is what always impresses me most. If I move to live in Sweden some day, I’d love to make friends with them. Yeah… right.. sure…

Anyway, you are here to see them, so this is the gallery. Enjoy. The shots of Kevin Max and his band are on the way. Check back soon.

It’s just a shame I was not a part of the slamming and bouncing mosh pit in front of the stage. Had to protect my camera. Or maybe I am just getting older… Doh! I hate feeling like that.