Street Band!
I caught this funky little street band playing New Orleans Jazz in Walsall on Saturday – they were great despite being pestered by some little kid!
[tags] Street Band, Band, Street Entertainment, New Orleans Jazz, Jazz, Music, Walsall[/tags]
Sundays are the new Saturdays.
Oh yes! Yesterday I enjoyed a very nice day out in Birmingham my friend Steph. It started as a ‘let’s meet up and have a coffee for an hour or so’ and ended in an all day, drinking lots of coffee, eating food and drinking beer type of event. So that was a lot of fun, many words were spoken and many footsteps taken….Birmingham City Centre really is quite nice on a blustery Autumn Sunday, picturesque and not too busy.
We checked out the latest outdoor photo exhibition to hit Birmingham, an a amazing set of Wildlife photos by a photographer called Steve Bloom (check him out here), some of his photos are so amazing they look like paintings, and some capture a moment of such natural awe and action that they’re breath-taking. Well worth checking out.
Also worth checking out if you haven’t already (I hadn’t!) is Starbucks’ Vanilla Latte! I’ve drunk regular latte for years, even put Vanilla sprinkles on top of it…but the Vanilla Syrup one is delicious, so thanks to Stephenie for the recommendation! All we need now is a Starbucks in Walsall…..it’s only a matter of time, so come on you corporate bastards – come and make money out of me and my friends! ;)
So….England beat Poland, finished top of the group….and Villa beat Blues who are now in the relegation zone – all is right in the world of Football!
Bloc Party were pretty damn good last Thursday, really enjoyed the gig…the night after that I caught ‘The Feeling’ in Wolverhampton…nice to catch up with the guys who I’d not seen for a couple of years and their new band is ace, quite quirky poppy indie…reminded me of Queen and Jellyfish, maybe a bit of early Supergrass and the poppier side of New Radicals, definitely worth checking out when they tour next year….massive choruses that you can’t help but tap your foot, nod your head to and wake up singing the next morning. Just what the doctor ordered!
Saturday night was spent out and about in Walsall, visiting more than one pub (somewhat of a rarity) and ending up in ‘The Trough’ (as it used to be called)….a proper dirty rock club, with loud rock music blasting all night…and loads of dudes that look like Nick Oliveri. A good time was had by all.
Today I bought another album from Pearl Jam’s ‘official bootlegs’ series. For their current North American tour they have a new download shop where for 10 dollars you buy the full gig (in this case 2 and half hours long) in hi quality MP3s format (better quality that the tracks iTunes sell), custom printable artwork for each show and I also got 19 hi-res photos of the show….all for about 6 quid!
I choose to buy the recording of their recent Toronto gig because Bono had appeared on stage with them and sung Neil Young’s ‘Keep On Rockin In The Free World’. Bono and Vedder were in fine form with Eddie paying homage to U2 earlier in the show (all of U2 were watching from the wings) and later Bono repaid the compliment when adlib-ing in the song. Two very cool statesmen of rock, both with a killer sense of humour. The Toronto set also had quite a few songs I haven’t heard them do live many times on the recordings I have, and also a cover of ‘Harvest Moon’ by Neil Young (they refer to him as ‘Uncle Neil’ and were playing in his home-country!)…..so that was an added bonus. Eddie’s on stage banter is great as ever too.
Tomorrow I don’t have many plans…..Wednesday I meeting up with Kerrie, and Thursday hooking up with an old friend who I’ve not seen much of for the last couple of years, could be a bit of a reunion of sorts which should be interesting.
The weeks keep flying by at the moment, which I suppose is a good thing. It’ll be Christmas before I know it and I’ll need to be buying loads of presents…..I’m already planning! Still if time is flying, it must be because I’m enjoying myself, right?
London to Newquay (Via Home)
I suck at posting regularly. I started off well, but when I get really busy I slack. And then I can’t face a mega-entry to catch up, so this will be a half-mega-entry.
Last Wednesday, August 31st, a few days after my last entry I jumped in the van and headed down to London with my good friends (and family members) The Deciphers for their gig at The Marquee in London. It was a nice sunny day and we had a good laugh on the journey down. Arrived at the venue which was AIR CONDITIONED! In London! A venue! This was a big relief as it was 31 degrees outside and very sweaty – not the kind of temperature you want when you’re lifting heavy stuff around small, sweaty clubs under hot lights!
Soundcheck was remarkably easy and before long we were done and out of there while the other bands got on. We headed to the pub for some food and pre-show beers. Met up with various friends and it was most enjoyable. I do love visiting London in the summer….especially in the evening when it’s cooled down and calmed down and you can just chill out in a typical English pub. It’s heaven. Before long we headed back to the venue and caught a bit of the support bands. This was The Deciphers’ first London show since they’d all played in various other bands, so there were A LOT of folks who came down to see them. Lots of familiar faces I’d not seen for 2 or 3 years, people who worked with the Dum Dums, Clarkesville, Sonara…as well as everyone’s friends and family, so it was great to see so many people. It also made my night a bit chaotic trying to chat with everyone and get ready for the show. I also managed to trip on the edge of the stage and spill water everywhere during change over, which was pretty amusing to all involved, including myself….although the bruises on my shins weren’t so amusing the next day!
The guy’s set went well, very few technical problems which is always nice. Stu forgot to swing his mic stand around on one of the tracks he sings backing vocals on, so I had to run on behind him and move it for him. I’m sure he does it on purpose sometimes so I have to go on stage and look like his bitch! He loves it. By the time they’d finished everyone was happy with how it went, despite the on stage sound not being great. So far the reaction from all the industry types has been very encouraging too, so this is a good sign. We’ll be back in the big smoke soon.
By the time we’d finished chatting, loaded out and got into the van it was about 1am. We then made the 125 mile trip back up to Birmingham. By the time my head hit the pillow it was 4:30am and I had to be up at 9am the next day to go on holiday to Newquay.
I woke up the next morning not feeling too bad – just a bit dehydrated. Started packing all my stuff up for the trip to Newquay. It was Steve & Michael’s Uncle’s stag do weekend and there was 31 of us descending on Newquay over the weekend! We left about 1:30pm and arrived in Newquay 4 and a half hours later. I travelled down with Stat & Dicko and we met up with Big Yarn, Mike & Steve on route. We all check in…them at their trendy surf lodge, and Stat and I at our old school hotel, which happened to have the best sea view in Newquay! Had a few drinks and waited for the others to start turning up. John (the stag) arrived shortly after and the major drinking began. Dicko began the weekend in style and attempted to eat his polystyrene burger packet at the kebab shop later that night. It was of course captured on video, for future use ;-)
The next few days were spent playing football & cricket on the beach, eating, drinking, watching the match England on TV…..I visited the Blue Reef Aquarium one morning when I was up before everyone else…we went to numerous pubs, all of which were pretty cool old mans’ pubs. I really liked Newquay. I think we went at the right time, just as the holiday season was winding down, so it wasn’t too busy and full of twats…it was just right. The weather was amazing the whole time and waking up and looking out over the cliffs, beach and sea each morning was so nice. I live about as far away from the sea as you can in England!
I took a ton of photos on my phone, so many that I’m considering buying a bigger memory card for when I next go away, which I’d like to be sooner rather than later! I posted a load over at my Moblog (clicky) and there’ll be more soon.
A good time was had by all….sun, sea, sand, footie, beer and friends. All good.
I came back to a silly amount of emails, hence me not blogging sooner. Went to see ‘Crash’ last night and really liked it, very good storyline and well done….kinda similar to ‘Magnolia’ so if you’ve seen that check it out…and if not, check them both out!
The past week I have mostly been listening to Our Lady Peace ‘Healthy In Paranoid Times’, Death Cab For Cutie’s ‘Plans’, anything and everything by the Foo Fighters and most recently ‘After The Goldrush’ by Neil Young, which I found online for a fiver, bargain!
Like A Hurricane
I’ve had a pretty uneventful week. Had engagement drinks with Steve & Catherine and about 50 other people on Wednesday. Steve is already worrying about how the hell he’s going to be able to invite everyone he knows the wedding (not that a date has even been set yet!). I told him they should just have a small wedding and get everyone to come to The Wharf for the reception. But girls don’t like things like that do they? So telling his fiancé that he thinks they should have their wedding reception at the local pub may not go down to well. But you never know.
Thursday was Scrat rehearsal as usual. It went well and as well as running through the set and trying to figure out how we can’t end on of the songs we’ve been playing for months (my fault), we were all pretty happy with it I think. Bashed out a new cover which we’re going to do, and we’ve got a set of 13 songs now, which is pretty good going. The gig is October 1st, so we only have 6 weeks to go!
I am still enjoying 24 season 4 with Stat & Dicko. It rocks.
Today I went into Birmingham on a bit of a solo shopping trip. The city centre is really nice in the sun (see moblog) and even nicer on Sundays when there’s a much more chilled out vibe, nowhere near as frantic as Saturdays, or weekdays. I walked around in the sun, mooched in record shops….bought Neil Young’s greatest hits album for 7 quid and was recommended two studio albums by the guy on the till in HMV. He has 15 Neil Young albums, so I shall take his recommendation to heart! I also bought a cool new polo neck t-shirt type thing and some sandy coloured cords, which I really like. I *almost* managed to lose my sunglasses, but realised I’d left them in the fitting room at Debenhams, and luckily when I got back someone there had found them. The last pair of sunglasses I lost ended up at the bottom of the Norfolk Broads somewhere after I looked over the side of our boat whilst on holiday! I was not the only one to lose their shades that holiday!
This coming week I shall be working on promo stuff for the Hotel Cafe Tour (see above flyer) which Imogen is taking part in over in the US of A. It’s a travelling tour with an assortment of solo artists, all sharing a tour bus, a ‘house’ band and ‘house’ crew. Kind of like a travelling musical circus! Shame I’m not going really.
I’m also going to see the Foo Fighters at a tiny ’secret’ (read: worst kept secret EVER) gig at The Astoria in London. The last time I saw them was at this venue and it’s nearly 3 years to the day – the capacity is under 2,000, as opposed to the 10,000+ shows they tend to now play, so I’m really glad I got tickets, can’t wait!!
Oh and I went to see ‘The Island’ on Tuesday – I thought it was really great, but then again any film with Scarlett Johansson in is great in my book ;-) …..But seriously I really enjoyed it….Euan McGregor is wicked and their on screen relationship worked really well. Only a couple of OTT Hollywood moments, defintely worth seeing.
Sun Hits The Sky
I haven’t posted for a few, what have I been up to? Well…
Wednesday night I went to see The Presidents Of The USA. They were class! Really tight and very amusing. They played all the crowd pleasers from their early albums and a load of new stuff. I love them when their debut album came out back 1995, so it was really cool to ‘rediscover’ them last week, when I noticed they were playing locally. They were really, really, good and definitely don’t deserve to be branded a ‘novelty’ or ‘one hit wonder’ band. They made everyone sit down at one point, which wasn’t easy as sitting down people take up a lot more room than standing up people and the venue was packed – they even had a solo on “the world’s smallest invisible harmonica” too! Brilliant!
Thursday afternoon I had drinks and lunch with Steve and Paul (who cooks up some mean meals at The Wharf), then headed over to see Stu about borrowing some cymbal, which I tested out later at our Scrat rehearsal. It went pretty well and I think I might purchase a couple of cymbals from Stu, as I need some new ones desperately.
Friday evening I went to The Flock with some mates and had a few JD & Cokes. Nice. Steve was due to meet us, but mysteriously didn’t come out – very odd behaviour for Mr Social Animal.
Saturday morning revealed why – he only went ands proposed to his girlfriend on Saturday night! He called me on Saturday and just dropped it into the conversation casually! I think my first word was “cool”! I hadn’t expected it, but it’s great news! And he’s already worried that we’ve all go so much dirt on him, we’re going to give him hell during the best man’s speech – I can’t wait! But seriously, I’m really pleased for him and Catherine. Steve getting married. Who’d have thought it!
Later on Saturday went shopping and succeeded in purchasing the ‘24′ series 1-4 boxset on DVD for only 75 quid! Nowhere had it apart from MVC, and I figured it was going to be expensive, as it was 90 quid online and MVC are usually expensive…but they surprised me and helped me indulge in my habit that afternoon. Myself, Stat and Dicko began watching that evening.
Sunday was pretty uneventful, I was bored shitless, spent most of the day in bed, and even watch about an hour of cricket with Stat & Dicko, but that made me feel tired again. In the evening we watch some more of Series four of 24…we’re about 5 hours in and hopefully we’ll get some more watched tonight. It’s so damn addictive!
Today I woke up at 5:45am with a start. I’m not sure why, but I was dreaming. On Friday I got cocked around royally by See Tickets over my Foo Fighters tickets I ordered, but it got sorted on Saturday (or so they’re telling me). The Foos are also apparently doing a ’secret’ show at The Astoria in London on August 24th as a Reading/Leeds warm up. It’s about the worse kept secret in the music business, cause everyone know about it. I think this morning I was dreaming about tickets for the gig on the 24th going on sale (they haven’t yet) because I woke suddenly and was panicking that tickets had gone on sale and were going to sell out fast. So at 5:45am, I turned on my computer, to check they’d not gone on sale in-between going to bed at 12:45am and waking up at 5:45am. Unsurprisingly – the hadn’t gone on sale! So I went back to bed! Weirdo.
