Category: Music (Page 5 of 8)

i can make an educated guess as to why I ended up with three bulky copies of this months Birmingham Town Hall/Symphony Hall brochure though the post. My address is spelt in slightly different variations on each thick white lumpy envelope, all in uppercase on one, correctly on another and then a mix of uppercase and lowercase on the third. I guess they’ve gathered them up from tickets I’ve bought in various places and added each instance to their list.

I have no idea at all how I ended up on the Monto Water Rats Weekly email Update, I’m not in London that often so its kind of irrelevant to me too, but I don’t like to complain…

I was similarly confused to find a newsletter from Drift Records arriving in my inbox, I’m sure I’ve never signed up for it, In fact I’d never heard of Drift Records at all, though I had heard, and bought, the album by The R. G. Morrison who seems to be one of the guiding forces behind it.

Anyway, there I was, tied to the laptop, toiling away on the hottest saturday of the year when it popped into my inbox. Such was my involvement with the work I was doing at the time, and my intrigue at any label with a record called ‘Finish your chips’ that I was soon off, trawling round the interweb sampling the Drift collective wares. There we’re no samples on the website so it was on to the mildly tedious myspace, it ain’t great when all you can connect to is a 56k phone line, anyway, after listening to a few tracks I was soon headed back to visit the Drift Shop.

The above mentioned ‘Finish your chips’ album by Matt Eaton is very fine indeed. I also really liked the nicely packaged and stylistically varied Thirty Pounds of Bone  ‘The homesick children of migrant mothers’ album. In fact I’m looking forward to the listed forthcoming Mary Hampton album as well.

As soon as I was done it gave me some much needed motivation to get back to work and earn some money to pay for the unplanned shopping excursion. Everyones a winner indeed.

In fact the only bad thing I have to say about the whole thing is that they both cds are without the bands/albums name on them, so I know that at some future point I’m destined to spend many hours trying to remember what they are called and where the cases might be…

Foot tappin’ & Dance at the screamin’ festival…

i‘ve just read of a cheaply priced [what they used to call ‘mid-price’] compilation from one of the DJ’s of the Screamin’ festival, DJ AT[?], its called Foot tappin’ & Dance at the screamin’ festival. The festival itself is celebrating its tenth year, not sure if I’ll be making it this year though, disappointingly.

I noticed it at HMV here in the UK for £5.99 or if you’re located elsewhere, you can buy it direct from El Toro for €10.

No sign of the promised Caroline Casey album as yet though…

Curfew in Wolverhampton…

or so it seems.

Went to see Henry Rollins do one of his spoken word shows there earlier tonight, was a great show, if a little bum numbing due to the three hour plus talk time. Entertaining thoughout though.

The show length did also lead to a slightly confused, and not unnoticed, mass exodus while Henry was still midway through a Christopher Walken anecdote. See while the doors to the show opened at seven, and the stage time was eight-ish, the latest car park in the town, the Civic Centre car park, only opens till eleven pm, when it gets locked down for the night [I have to say it, the car park, is a fantastically dated sixties job full of leaking cement walls, overpowering lights and totaly confusing in its layout – I loved it].

Anyway, as the choice came to a night spent wandering the streets of wolverhampton or missing the last ten minutes of the show, well, the Car Park won. If any one knows how the story ended, please drop me a line…

Supersonic, Screamin’ and more…

Leaving New York city
seems I’ve left it too long between updates, I’ve just uploaded a bunch of photos from the last couple of months, Photos from the 2007 Screamin’ Festival in Calella, a few of holiday pics from New York City in June and most recently some pictures from the 2007 Supersonic Festival here in Birmingham.

I must put in a mention of the Ray Collins’ Hot-Club who were definitely a highlight at this years Screamin Festival, I never thought a Swing band could be so much fun. Caroline Casey was great too, with a funny line in on stage banter and some great songs to back it up, I believe she was recording her first solo record while she was performing at the festival for El Toro Records which I’ll be looking out for.

Last weekend was the Supersonic Festival, All I can say is that I’m sorry that other events and conflicts have kept me from making the first four. A fantastic weekend of music and performance. Highlights for me was the, clears throat, ‘METAL – A symposium to celebrate and explore the West Midlands musical heritage‘ which kicked the whole thing off, four genuinely interesting talks from people all very passionate about music, I felt it did struggle to pull everything back to the midlands at some points but it was really entertaining and informative, and I’m not just saying that because of the free wine and nibbles. Friday night at the Custard factory was kind of busy, I guess because of the weather as much as anything, but the space at The kitchen was just too small for all the people so I can’t say I really saw enough of anyones set in there. The number did thin toward then end so I did get to see Otto Von Schirach in the Medicine bar which I’d certainly class as interesting, and, it was kind of fun too.

Saturday opened with a bit of sunshine and a band called Shit & Shine, well, if you can call six drummers and a couple of guitarists a band. Have to say though it was a bloody fantastic noise they made, hard to describe so I’m glad I was there to see it. As this is turning into an essay let me quickly list Pharaoh Overlord and Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses as my other highlights. All in all a fantastic couple of days entertainment and only just up the road as well. Next year I think I’ll be organising things around the festival rather than the other way around.

Supersonic Festival

looking forward to making my very first Supersonic Festival this year.

Supersonic Festival Flyer

capsule.org.uk

My Nightmare Before Christmas

Minehead Beach
Just back from my second ATP festival of the year, at the new Butlins Minehead site. Nearly turned into my own personal nightmare after one of the wheels on my car decided it had its own agenda and wanted to go separate ways with me and the other three wheels.

A big thank you and recommendation to Longstones Garage, Cannington nr Bridgwater and the ever so helpful Michael, who not only got everything back together in time for my journey home on Monday but also drove me the rest of the way to the festival on Friday.

The festival itself was an interesting affair, new venue [Butlins Minehead – Think a giant motorway services, only with alcohol sold everywhere] and a few teething problems regards the stages and their capacity’s and their wish to create queues everywhere. The largest problem for me was the stages and the fact that they were spread out and the usual ‘pick and mix’ style of viewing a bit of everyone’s set wasn’t really possible. So didn’t see as many bands as usual but the set for the Gang Of Four was really enjoyable, as were The Stooges, shame Mike Watt didn’t get to do a solo set mind, and the MC5/DKT finale was a fine way to end things. Theres some pictures of the Saturday afternoon stroll to find a pub we took, that turned into a 10 mile round trip (You see a sign for ‘The Blue Anchor‘ and you figure its a pub along the coast a little – You’re so wrong) Here.

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All images and artwork copyright ©1998 - 2024 chris hathway, illustrator& Hathway/Creative