Mammal are an  Australian rock band on their first tour in the UK and I’ve been a fan ever since seeing their video for SMASH THE PIÑATA on Scuzz TV. The gig last night was by far the best live gig I’ve been to! The one thing that most bands seem to lack and Mammal have in spades is showmanship, something that helps get the crowd involved and into the whole experience. Right from the start the whole band let everyone know just how into their music and their fans they are, with Ezekiel Ox giving a great performance both vocally and physically.

Ox was in the crowd early on, getting everyone to dance to the songs meant for just that, and getting everyone clapping and bouncing for the heavier rockier tracks. Rio’s is a small venue with a main floor in front of the stage and a raised area with a balcony in front at the back. Ox climbed up onto the balcony railings on numerous occasions making sure everyone in the place was feeling the music and felt involved in the night.

Every member of the band showed just how a rock band should put on a show and I salute each and every one of them. Mammal are back in December with another band called The Answer and I for one will be looking out for tickets to see the show once more.

When I see a band live who I’ve been listening to for some time I always hope that they sound as good in the flesh as they do on the record. Mammal surpassed all expectations and set a new high bar for live shows as far as I’m concerned. Even if your not a rock fan, I’d challenge you to go to a Mammal gig and not enjoy the show.

The crowd were asked to spread the word by word of mouth and here’s my effort to aid the cause. Watch the video on the link below and then watch a few more on You Tube, especially the live ones. Spread the word yourselves and maybe I’ll see you at a future Mammal gig, you won’t regret it.

Mammal – SMASH THE PIÑATA

I’ve created a lens over at squidoo with all the info for you or you can click on the link below.

Twitme allows you to customise the text summary which is sent to your twitter account and it also creates short url’s for you to allow more space for your twitter message. In the backend of your Wordpress blog you also have an area with additional features.

Twitme provides the following additional features : -

• Write manual twitter updates from your blog
• See your followers, reply to them or delete them should you want to
• See your favourites
• View your direct message inbox and outbox
• View your twitter timeline from your blogs admin area
• View a list of the post summaries sent to twitter and resend if needed.
• Plus other features I’ve probably forgotten about

I use another plugin for showing twitter posts on the front end of a blog I’m creating for work but Johnny has told me that this will also be include in a future version of twitme.

Now I’m not someone who twitters all day about my every movement, though I do use it to keep in touch with friends. It’s sometimes easier to send write a twitter message that your friends can see, instead of emailing everyone. Despite my light usage on my personal account,  I can see the value of twitter for publicising your blog. It costs nothing and there’s always the chance someone will follow you if they like your blog posts.

With twitme they will be notified as soon as you write a new post on your blog, via their twitter timeline. MMO-Symposium has around 10 followers follow us as a direct result of twitme’s auto post summaries, which isn’t bad going considering we don’t write manual twits.

If you use twitter and have a blog, give twitme a try.

A total of 4 bands played on the night, I’m afraid I can’t remember the name of the first band. The 2nd band on were Kid Champion who put on a good set, despite the problems the sound guy was having making the vocal’s heard. This is another band that is definitely worth a listen and along with Soul Circus is a band I’d happily have on my Ipod.

The last band of the night, well I can’t tell you their name lets just say we went downstairs after a while as our ears were bleeding. Don’t get me wrong I like heavy rock/metal as much as anyone, but this was more like a wall of noise.

It seems I’d missed out a bit of code when updating e-post, so thanks for letting me know Elaine.

I’ve just uploaded a new .zip with the correct files included which can be obtained from the Scripts page

If you have any questions about anything on the site, just drop me a message via the irealms.co.uk contact form.