Listening to Radio 4 on the way to $contract, I learned that there is a gig celebrating The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, tonight at the Purcell Rooms on London’s South Bank.
Sadly I’m extremely busy right now (hence lack of blog entries) but I’d quite like to have gone to that; if anyone else is interested please let me know how it turns out!
Hurrah! Veteran prog-rock (and latterly pop-rock) band Genesis have announced they’re going to do a world tour in 2007 ‘for the fun of it’.
See you at Twickenham or Manchester next July, depending on where we’re lucky enough to get tickets for 
<%image(20061008-drich2.jpg|120|116|)%>Last night I pottered over to Pudsey to see the Dave Rich Band who were playing at the Jug & Barrel, an odd venue which was half pub and half hall, buried in a not-so-salubrious area of Leeds.
Imagine – if you will – what the sound would be like if Bruce Hornsby and Ian Shaw spawned around the time of early 1970s Genesis (it’s been a while since I heard a good rock track in 5/4!); that might give you an idea how this band sounds, a soft-rock mix of piano and soaring guitar which made me forget any troubles of the week. It’s very rare that you’ll find any instrumentalist who’s just as comfortable on an acoustic guitar as they are on a piano and Dave seemed to manage that with aplomb.
Support act Ian North wasn’t half bad either – a good acoustic guitar and singer over from Canada, with a sound reminding me of times spent listening to Adam Phillips.
Sadly I’d not brought enough money to buy any CDs but they’re available on the websites and purchases shall be made. Photos here if you want a shufty.
Sir Malcolm Arnold has died. Nicky assistant-managed his portfolio during her time at Novello, and spoke very highly of his carer Anthony Day.
His most famous “mainstream” work was the score for the Alec Guinness movie Bridge On The River Kwai, but he also scored the St Trinians movies from their first release in 1954 (which I didn’t realise).
More about him over on Wikipedia.
Of course he will be missed – his most recent premiere took place last Saturday – but I understand he had been very ill for a long, long time so maybe it’s a mixed blessing.
Dan had been nattering about doing the Myspace thing with the Obvious Pseudonym back catalogue, so this morning I got round to doing it.
Quite apart from the abysmal interface, the awful anti-colourblind captcha mechanism (I’m not colourblind but sympathise), and non-intuitive navigation it wouldn’t let me become an artiste if I already had an account or at least I couldn’t see a way of doing it. Oh, and it’ll only let you upload four songs (Cheggers is on there), so it’s hardly a replacement for the much-missed mp3.com.
Frankly, it reminds me of a pre-1998 Geocities. Why is this so popular when it’s so bloody abysmal and insecure? Beats me.
Browsing at lunchtime, I was pleased to discover the following on the B-52′s Official Website that “the B-52′s head into the studio early Sept. with producer Steve Osborne (KT Tunstall, Suede, New Order) to begin recording songs for their new album”. Reading a bit further down, it seems that it’s got an early 2007 release date together with a tour. Yay!
Syd Barrett has died, the original dude from Pink Floyd who wrote some excellent stuff in the late 60′s including “Bike” and “I’ve Got A Mouse”. And “Wordsong”. I went through university listening to some of his stuff (thanks Steve for introducing it to me, wherever you are nowadays).
He died from some complications brought on by diabetes: 60 is still young.
On the bus home, I think I shall listen to “The Madcap Laughs”.
<%image(20060626-who_thumb.jpg|150|123|)%>Yesterday we spent the day at the O2 Wireless Festival (caution: horrible website) at Harewood House in Leeds. There are a few photos here taken with my faithful little Canon Powershot S50 (I’d heard organisers were turning away people with dSLRs at the gate so I didn’t want to risk it).
Quick redux of the day…
…and despite my cynicism it didn’t rain.
I understand this is the first year O2 have done it in Leeds, and it did show a bit: the speakers behind the media tower were badly imbalanced (either that or the crossover was shot to buggery), and we didn’t get out of the carpark until half past midnight owing to a complete lack of traffic control or signposted exits (games of “hey let’s invent a new lane!” were common – we were in the middle of a field after all).
The other puzzlement – it was billed as O2 Wireless Festival – so why couldn’t I find any wireless at all? Seems to me that an 802.11b intranet showing band info and “who’s playing now” etc. would have been great, especially since they’d run out of programmes on the merchanise stands. As it was, I used what 3G connectivity I had to find out stuff from their bloody awful website (the low-bandwidth section of it is missing loads of pages, and the high-bandwidth bit crashed my Flash plugin).
Was it worth it? Hell yes – I could get used to being an aging rocker.
Just got back from Harewood House, and seeing The Who at the O2 Wireless Festival. By and large a great gig followed by bloody awful exit arrangements for the parking (2h sitting in a car in the middle of a field). I’ll write more about it tomorrow, and there’s some photos too.
Wakefield Music Collective’s annual weekend showcase of local bands in Wakefield Clarence Park (aka Clarence 16) has been cancelled, apparently due to lack of funding from local sponsorship and changed National Lottery funding guidelines.
Pictures from past years here, but all is not lost – they’re trying to organise another “do” in Autumn and are getting stuff together for Clarence 2007 well in advance.