Tag: Blog

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Swearing complaints about Live8

A whole load of people have been complaining about the bad language on stage at Live8.

Now, just from reading this blog, you’ll know I’m not averse to a well placed obscenity or two, in fact, I think swear words are a marvellous addition to anyone’s vocab when used creatively.

So, in the context of a concert highlighting that up to 50,000 people a day are dying due to lack of food and AIDS medication that trade-law reform, aid and debt relief could bring an end to, is the bigger offence the swearing or the dying?

To anyone who wrote and complained, I so hope you write and complain to your elected representatives about the preventable deaths being caused to you can have cheaper food and £10 pairs of jeans.

Having said that, whose idea was it to put Snoop Dogg on in the middle of the afternoon????? haha!

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Edinburgh Photos…

The March –

in The Meadows –

next to the Grayfriars Bobbie pub (a regular flyering zone during the Fringe) –

looking back from The Royal Mile –

the white band snakes its way down to Prince’s Street –

Didn’t manage to meet up with many people I knew that were there – some some St Luvvie’s, but didn’t see Andrew and Lynsey or Jyoti who were there too. However, I did find Gareth and Jane –

Now, these t-shirts were confusing –

…I thought Franciscans took a vow of poverty??? Were there also Franciscans against Chastity and Obedience? Nuns For Promiscuity? Bishops for Swearing? Trappists for a good ole’ chat? Very odd…

This MPH banner on Edinburgh Castle was great to see – it was about a hundred feet long –

and finally, my favourite street in Edinburgh, from whence came one of my Lincoln nicknames, ‘The Lady’ –

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This month's visit for search-engine mutants…

so here’s the top howevermany search strings that lead people to this ‘ere blogland in June –

1 brooklyn beckham
2 tal wilkenfeld
3 feline concussion
4 narcissim
5 pavement art
6 steve lawson
7 strange things
8 todd rungren
9 dude steve lawson
10 julian beever
11 pavement art perspective
12 seth armstrong
13 steve from jerry springer
14 supersize me soundtrack
15 betterment of society
16 derek bailey archive
17 dude etymology
18 eric roche
19 etymology dude
20 galloway’s speach to the senate

What a most weird and sporadically wonderful collection that is. And who on earth is Julian Beever, and how on earth did it point to this blog???? However, I’m delighted to see that the pursuit of the ‘betterment of society’ will lead you to this blog. Wise words indeed! 🙂

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When web-filters go mad..

So, there’s an article on World Music Central about Bruce Cockburn’s reissued albums.

However, their word filter doesn’t like the ‘cock’ half of his name, so his name is renders as Bruce *censor*burn. You couldn’t make it up…

Soundtrack – White Town, ‘Peek And Poke’ (most recent album from ‘Your Woman’ hit-bloke, and blog-buddy, Jyoti Mishra – tune-laden old school pop music, the way it used to be before attitude disolved all trace of tune. Some of it reminds me early Everything But The Girl in its mix of dryly recorded voice and minimal instrumentation and blatant pop melodicism. Good stuff!)

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and on a lighter note

Had a fun weekend, though not got as much work done as I should have.

Starting Friday lunch-time, it was yet another ‘last ever’ gig for the RFH Foyer as booked by JazzShark. It was a particularly fitting booking, as it was Rebecca Hollweg, a fabulous singer/songwriter, with a great lil’ quartet, featuring Andy Hamill on bass – one of my favourite bassists in the country. It was a lovely gig, with yet another ‘thanks, Sue!’ speech at the end, and a great rendition of ‘How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You’, with Winston Clifford changing the words to ‘How Sweet It Is To Be Booked By Sue’!

Friday night was a Soul Space meeting, planning the next service, which I won’t be at. They’re doing a Labyrinth service, which are always fun – see labyrinth.org.uk for more on what they are (and do the online version – it’s very chilled and lovely.)

Saturday started with teaching, and then in the afternoon it was Malcolm’s ordination at St Paul’s Cathedral. Malcolm (and his other half, Meryl) have been at St Luke’s for ages, and have had a pretty huge influence on the way the church looks, feels and thinks. Very lovely peoples. Malcolm has been at Vicar Hogwarts for a couple of years, and was ordained on Saturday. I got there 10 minutes before the service started and already all the seats were gone – seems there are lots of people in London who like the high-camp of some C of E pomp and ceremony on a Saturday afternoon. So I stood at the back, gave Malcolm a wave as he came in, and left after about half an hour, and headed over to The RFH, to go to the Patti Smith gig at Meltdown.

Was there very early, so was following the score in the Tennis. Murray was two sets to love up, looking good for another upset. Fell apart in the third, lost it 6-0. Was a break up in the fourth, all going v. well, but the length of the match got the better of him, and he still lost. It was a very odd experience just following the score – no news, no report, no audio. Just the score changing on my phone screen as I hit refresh… Very sad to see him lose.

Anyway, Juliet turned up, and we went in to see John Cale – who was on startling form. The opening tune was a spooky surreal monologue in the style of Velvet Underground’s ‘The Gift’, which some fantastic spacey noises.. and a very recogniseable bass sound… …which I soon recognised as being Flea from the Chili Peppers. I’m still not sure if I really dug what he was doing… it was a lot more pentatonic/obvious lick-based stuff than the rest of the band, but maybe in needed that to ground it… hmmm

Anyway, the rest of the set blended so many fantastic elements, from the spookiness of the opener, to some really straight ahead piano-playing singer-songwriter stuff through to full on Neil Young stylee guitar-rage in the last track. A sublime set. Always good to see the old guys rock out!

during the break, we realised we were sat next to Roy Harper, a genial chatty bloke, for sure, who amusingly kept throwing plastic cups at the losers in front of us who kept blocking our view by standing in stupid places.

Patti’s gig was very fine too – she played through the whole ‘Horses’ album, start to finish, and then did ‘My Generation’ as cover at the end, not wholly convincingly, with a ‘rise up and take the streets’ rant in the middle… A fine sentiment, but a tricky one to deliver in the middle of a song without looking like a raving polemicist. Discourse works better than shouting, methinks. Or am I just getting old?

Anyway, I was very pleasantly surprised by her set – most of Rock’s sacred cows have no place, in my humble opinion, being on the throne they are on, but she was entertaining, engaging, intelligent and captivating.

Sunday – church in the morning (sermon was way too long and I can’t can’t handle full-on exegesis on a Sunday morning…), followed by coffee in Highgate with Steve and Lorna, after which the three of us meet up with Harry, Karen and Juliet for more cakes. Too much cake.

And finally, last night, called round to Orphy’s to drop off a copy of Jazz Review (he does the blindfold test this month), and ended up helping him register orphyrobinson.com and getting orphyrobinson.blogspot.com set up as well, so he’s now got a news page, and an atom feed – here.

Soundtrack – Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder, ‘Talking Timbuktu’.

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Biased reporting? surely not…

The link I provided in the blog post below about debt relief was to an article in The Telegraph. Here’s a quote from it –

“Debt cancellation will be linked to economic and political reforms to ensure that the money saved is not squandered by corrupt despots.”

??? What kind of sloppy, piss-poor childish nonsense is that? Surely they want to mention the huge advantages to western governments and businesses that such reforms provide? What kind of bollocks is that?

Dreadful.

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ID Cards? no thanks

Culled from this post on Jyoti’s blog, have a look at No2ID.net – a site setting out the case against the governments proposed ID card system.

It does sound like a gargantuan waste of money, and just another level of possible fraud for large scale criminal organisations to indulge in.

Given the instability of computer systems the world over, surely storing everyone’s data on some central computer is fraught with the possibility of being hacked, not to mention the hideous Big Brother-ness of the concept.

We already have the provision for checking someone’s ID, without having further ID cards – are passports and driver’s licences not good enough? I know that when I want to or need to demostrate that I am who I say I am, I don’t seem to have any trouble finding enough forms of proof, whether I’m applying for a mortgage or a Blockbuster card.

The whole think comes across like another balls up in the increasingly bogus and flawed notion of ‘the war against terror’, coupled with some nonsense about stopping ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bogus asylum seekers’. No mention of it clearly penalising anyone who either doesn’t understand the system, or whose english isn’t good enough to grasp what they need to do.

The list of reasons for it is flimsy at best. The list of reasons against it is huge. Sounds like another New Labour screw up to me.

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Edinburgh Fringe Programme now online!!

Got back from a weekend in Berwick On Tweed (more on that later) to find the Edinburgh Fringe programme had been posted out. And it’s also now online for your perusal!!

Obviously, the first place to go is to the entry for my show, where you’ll want to buy tickets for multiple nights for you and your friends.

Then, from blog-world, there’s Richard Herring’s show, from bass-world, there’s guy pratt’s show, from jazz-world, there’s Julie McKee’s show, from RFH Foyer gigs-world, there’s The Big Buzzard Boogie Band show, from last year’s showbiz pals-world, there’s Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden’s show, from guitar-world, there’s Antonio Forcione’s show and from unmissable gig-world, there’s Spearhead.

So, spread the word, tell your friends and get them to come to the show, and I’ll have flyers for you to download everso soon!

Soundtrack – Prefab Sprout, ‘From Langley Park To Memphis’.

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What? New Labour? Introducing a Sensible Policy? surely not!!

Thanks to this post on Sarda’s Blog, I’ve just been reading about Community Interest Companies – the gist of it seems to be that a company that is set up for the the good of their community, with the intention of making money to be used for social benefit, can now have that written into the nature of the company, register it as a CIC, and have those aims protected by law even if there are corporate takeovers, shares are bought and sold, changes in management etc.

This – if it works and is what it says it is – is a FANTASTIC step forward in our share-holder obsessed financial-gain-is-everything society. I’ve long held that the conflict of share-holder vs stake-holder is at the very heart of what’s wrong with modern economics, and this new initiative seems to be set up to protect those companies whose activities are for the benefit of it’s stakeholders, even if that is to the detriment (or decreased benefit) of the share holders.

It remains to be seen whether or not this means that ‘ordinary’ companies can write into their code of practice a desire to deal ethically and in an environmentally sound way – I doubt it, as it seems like the legislation is about the primary aims of the company rather than ‘secondary’ ideologies about the nature of running a business, but it’s still one in the eye for those who think that everything exists just to make them money.

I’ll be watching closely to see what happens.

all the legalese and fine print can be found on the dti’s pages about CICs.

Soundtrack – Wayne Shorter, ‘High Life’.

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