I haven't spoken to Jamie from Whitgift for about 3 years but he contacted me a week ago to ask if I fancied seeing Paradise Lost this week. Apparently he remembered from our school daze that I was a fan, and seemed a likely companion to accompany him to his first metal gig. The reason was that Mike, a friend of his, happened to be the frontman of support act Serpico. A competent bunch of metalheads they produced a pretty impressive set with Mike doing a great job of winning over the crowd (never easy when you're newly graduated opening for band who've developed a following over 17 years and 10 albums). Mike, incidentally, is actually an Oxford lawyer, probably not something he publicises too much in the name of credibility. However Jamie let me in on a noble little secret that would damage it far more. We also met a girl who turned out to be the cousin of Serpico's talented 18-year-old guitarist who had a distracting tendency to wander across the stage.

Paradise Lost then emerged to play a fantastic retrospective set that covered everything since their Gothic album. The whole set was being recorded for a forthcoming DVD release which certainly made me jump at the chance to attend, having also been at the Opeth gig which spawned the superb Lamentations DVD. KOKO has a great multi-tiered structure so we took up a position higher up without feeling a world away from the stage (having been a few feet away from the band at the Mean Fiddler several years ago, I was not too disappointed). It was a strong set, sagging a little only towards the end. However this was more than made up for by two encores featuring Say Just Words and a great live rendition of Isolate. Bring on the DVD.

On a similarly music related note (no pun intended), Steve informed me about a Washington Post article chronicling the results when they took world famous virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell (he performed on the phenomenal Red Violin soundtrack) and had him busk in the metro. The results are either surprising or saddeningly predictable depending on your level of cynicism. However they don't simply berate modern society but actually investigate the meaning behind it, comparing it to "art without a canvas". Ultimately if beauty cannot make people recognise it, can it really be considered that beautiful? From Bell's perspective it was just deeply unsettling to find himself being ignored.