Still no baby. Now 4 days late. To say things are tense is an understatement. In order to relax at the weekend, I decided to take in a slightly unusual musical event, namely a gig by Marillion’s Steve Hogarth, part of his one man and a piano ‘h-natural’ tour. The gig in question was in Italy. I however was not in Italy and instead joined 79 other virtual bods watching the gig which was being simulcast through an audio stream to a stage in Second Life. The audio was however the live broadcast form the real life gig in Italy.
Having never played Second Life before, I duly went through the tutorial on ‘Orientation Island’ before teleporting to ‘Italy Island Resort’ where the gig was being held. Upon arrival it was not immediately clear where to go. The landing area however had numerous posters for the gig and clicking on these posters transported me direct to the venue itself, basically a big virtual stage in a big virtual field. Fair play to the guys who set it up, their attention to details was excellent, with Steve’s ‘logo’ as a backdrop to the stage.
What followed was a bit bizarre. The audio stream started and a virtual Steve Hogarth wandered onto the stage and sat down at his virtual baby grand piano and started playing. The likeness of his avatar was uncanny, complete with unkempt collar length hair. Strangely, although we were doing nothing more than listening to an audio stream, there was a sense of being at a proper gig. Everyone was chatting away amongst themselves using the ingame chat system and it felt very much of a communal experience.
Steve as always was on form. His voice is magnificent and is one of the few voices which can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A series of Marillion songs were obviously played in stripped down, piano format as well as a number of songs by the likes of The Beatles, Elton John, Leonard Cohen etc. A great night was had by all. Could this be the future of music?
I’ll post some pics later however one of the guys took a video of a snippet of ‘Imagine’.
on Oct 8th, 2007 at 5:52 am
I’m logging in most days now waiting for some news. Wishing you both the best….