Review: Pete Morton (with Gren Bartley support), Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough, Friday, February 3d, 2012...

Minus five here when I got back... but warmed by the musics that I almost avoided through inertia and the onset of a cold. And a surprisingly good turnout for the TappedButSettling gig at the Swan in the Rushes, Loughborough (God's Little Acre), given the weather. But PeteMorton will usually pull a crowd and with support from Gren Bartley it was always going to be never less than a good night. I knew I would have regretted it if I had stayed at home – because both these musicians are always moving relentlessly forwards and it would be a shame to miss bearing witness to their latest endeavours. Gren started the gig with mainly new material, abetted at the end by his friend on harmonies. Reining back slightly on his complex guitar playing and leaning more on the songs gave a different balance to a fascinating set. Then Pete came out of the blocks at terrible speed – his new material, jamming massive clusters of words into his lines like a rap artist, then whipping round to bring in a chorus on the old warhorse 'To be a farmer's boy,' his tirade against the falseness of so much contemporary life cutting a furrow back to simpler days, linking family and wider community. Blew me away, it has to be said. I don't entirely subscribe to his ideas but he certainly makes me think and Pete gets away with it because he isn't some ideologue, rather a deeply thoughtful musician with a line back to the English radical/Romantic tradition that is buttressed with much humour. His tack over the last couple of years seems to be word-crammed songs plus his new variants on the talking blues that roll out in fast streams (the rap adoption) then land suddenly on an apposite 'folk' chorus to provide a link backwards and also to bring in the audience, wrap them in the surge of his muse. A lot of resonations here – the cheekiest being that dreadful old McColl song 'Manchester Rambler' in the only version I've ever heard that I could take seriously. (My opinion – so, shoot me... ).You have to admire the chutzpah... saying 'Back at ya!' to the 'Revival/Tradition!'

Second half gave an opportunity for requests – 'Seven Billion Eccentrics,' 'Shepherd's Song,' 'Battle of Trafalgar,' 'Further,' and of course 'Another Train.' All of them celebrate people in the raw – one of the lines from 'Battle of Trafalgar,' written about a lock-in at a Leicester pub mentions the punters: 'You couldn't clone people like this in a million years,' and that is the common humanity in the best sense that he stands up for. Also rooted deep in an almost mystical 'England,' yet Pete is far from being a petty nationalist. 'Shepherd's Song,' his homage to John Clare reaches to a point where rural England was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and the coming modern age, eyed with trepidation by the poet who achieved brief fame in London before his collapse into madness, but who was also a musician skilled in the folk musics of his time. This double link with musical and literary traditions goes further with his recent forays as a stand up artist in the character of 'Geoff Chaucer' and Pete skilfully plays off the literary heritage with the folk music tradition that he comes out of at a diagonal, (via the initial energies of punk rock and street busking) and helps to transform and continue. The sharp vignettes of people in crowded day to day settings yet each unique goes back to the bustle and vibrancy of Chaucer's time and work. But far from any maddening academic stiflings and ignobled strifes, Pete is a man drunk on words and their permutations and resonances, jammed into the grittiness and possibilities of NOW. He just gets better... 

Grab a taste here...

All hail to Mr Marmion via TappedButSettling for setting up the gig... More, please...

Into the new year... Pete Morton/Gren Bartley gig...

It's been a while... but I have been buried away working on a new project in between the usual annoying illness/fatigue.  I have not been to any gigs recently either - but that changes on Friday incoming - 3d February - when I'll be down at the Swan in the Rushes, in God's Little Acre, for a gig headlined by one of my favourite musicians/writers etc.  Pete Morton.  Who will be supported by Gren Bartley, in what should prove to be a fascinating mix of acoustic styles.  Couple of vids on the TappedButSettling site to give a flavour of both...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Sunday, 13th February, 2011

Woke up after not much sleep with an appalling hangover but realised that staggering into the hotel breakfast was going to be a good idea... Somewhat refreshed - we talk in relative terms - I scanned the program for the day – and went back to bed. But come 1 pm I was down at the Sallis Benney, determined to bear witness to as much as my knackered-up body could stand. Cat Hawed were first off the blocks – three musicians from Helhesten and Towering Breaker – and played a stunning set, I thought. Starting in chamber music mode, accentuated by the use of clarinet, perhaps, although it was played on the extremes of register, poised and balanced as they tested the day, building to a roar as the form spread to encompass wilder sounds, loosely corralled, as it were, by intelligence. Bad Orb (Sarah Albury's solo vehicle) – standing stage left to the side of the projections on screen at the ubiquitous rummage sale table holding her electronics, voicing: ur ur ur repeated/recorded into the mike (Ur-Sounds?) to be bounced back and manipulated as source material, backdrop to a film, triangular motif and bird image recurring – superb in the marriage of sight and sound here. My day was off to a good start (no sight of Hugh Metcalfe-ian strategies so far). Martin Klapper's take on home movies was fascinating, old footage transformed by his bespoke techniques, dragged down slightly by the music which was a trifle cartoony, but the general flow pulled it along beyond annoyance. Other films that grabbed me: Stuart Pound's 'Breath Dance,' a cool hokey cokey in which the film stops, jumps back, moves on to create a stylised dance of pedestrians in Trafalgar Square. 'I'll raise you like a mother,' by Violaine Bergoin was a disturbing meditation on the trial and execution of the Ceasescu's, live horrific soundtrack placed over images of family life. With Gaddafi's recent televised demise fresh in the mind, it's worth quoting Violaine's remarks about her film:

'This piece is a reconstitution of a precise moment of my life, as a 8 year old, during an everyday family dinner and the broadcasting of the Ceauescu couple being trialled and executed. When Elena Ceauescu cried for her life, screaming to the guards taking her "I'll raise you all like a mother", which was then dubbed in French, my heart stopped and these words have been haunting me ever since and has been bringing impressions of déjà- vu until now. Today it has become a banality to watch upheavals, wars, famines, executions, genocides at 8 o'clock news within a familial structure. Yet the conflicts in this world may reflect our disabilities to communicate which results in decaying relationships. Maybe wars start within families first and expand to massive proportions.'

Back down to the Old Market for the last leg of the festival. Just in time to catch Ninni Morgia and Silvia Kastel, great wild guitar and howled vocals, processed and chopped about. Abruptly moving into a hard thumping beat as they rocked out – one that got some of the audience idiot dancing. I missed the beginning of Maja Jantar's set. A slight, slim figure on the side stage who displayed a wide range of vocal techniques – singing in tongues avant scat which segued at one point into a cool version of 'Cry me a river.' And back again. Noticeable for being able to hold a large crowd with nothing but voice . Vom Grill was loud, vocal contortions put through the electronic shredder, turning his vocals inside out. (YouTube vid here of a performance in Paris a couple of years back).

Then on to Vinyl Terror and Horror, Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen's duo who upturn turntablism as they use records as source material for their manipulations. Breaking open the straight box of DJing to reveal many other worlds inside, which were then explored intensively, their collective intelligence produced some of the best music of the weekend for this old boy. Cracks, crashes, pops, scratches, sudden bursts of trombones, choirs, voices wrenched out of the grooves into new configurations. Superb!

Unfortunately for me, the last act of the weekend. Dog Lady. Mike Collino is from Detroit and I fancifully thought I could hear the ghosts of old machines from the auto assembly plants in the subterranean chunks of sound grinding against each other. Across which he lashes some fragments of violin to be tossed and processed through his electronics rig.  Great set - after which reluctantly I had to go...

Final thoughts: a fantastic weekend. Large emphasis this year on sound poetry, hardly any jazz, lots of interesting films and multi-media, Colour out of Space back and firing on all cylinders. The new main venue at the Old Market looks like a winner, the crowds who turned up throughout must surely signal a success. Thanks to all who made it happen. And hopefully it will be on again next year

Another viewpoint here...
complete with ten minute snapshot overview.
 

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Saturday, 12th November, 2011

Saturday: strolled somewhat painfully from the hotel to the Sallis Benney (where the whole festival used to be held) for the afternoon sesh of film and sonics. Too much walking over the previous couple of days had left me somewhat hors de combat. I didn't stay for the whole event but caught Blue Yodel (Fiona Kennedy's solo gig) which cleansed my synapses suitably. Slew of good films: one that impressed me by its unsettling weirdness was 'Trypps#6 Malobil' by American Ben Russell. Catch a glimpse here...http://vimeo.com/6975261 A group of presumably white people in strange costumes come out of a building in a tropical village, soundtracked by drumming, walk through the assembled locals as off-camera sharp reports like gunfire occur sporadically. Some simulated sex. Some collision of cultures going on. If the A Band ever go on tour to South America, it could be like this. Ho ho. Apparently shot in the Maroon village of Malobe in Suriname. One of those films that lodge in your brain and will rerun over and over. Disturbing in a way it is difficult to describe.

Jeff Keen's movie was a psychedelic blast, fast moving streams of collage/images. But one bummer: never having seen Hugh Metcalfe live, I will never make the mistake of doing so in the future. The movie of his trip to an Austrian festival was embarrassing, to say the least. He used to team up with the late Bob Cobbing but his wanky repeating of phrases along the lines of: 'I fucking don't give a shit/Shit I fucking don't give/Give I fucking don't a shit' etc ad nauseam came across as some bad attempt at sound poetry/was just plain stupid. The barriers were broken a long way back, old cock. He looked like a middle-aged geography teacher trying to get down with the kidz.  How trangressive it all was. Called his ad hoc group: 'Turd Class.' Says it all, really. Maybe he should start a 'Feral Choir' (one of my other pet hates). Or as Bruce Sterling once said: 'If you want a sustained, independent and transgressive community that can’t be co-opted by society at large, you need to get out of the boho art scene, and right into organized crime.'

On a weekend bursting with creativities of all kinds, this was pathetic. But thanks for the warning...

Evening and back at the Old Market. Festivals are always over-loaded – it's difficult to get to every act, even when back to back in one place. Economies of thirst, urination etc, plus in my case, juggling with fatigue. So the night became truncated – more by accident in the end, it has to be said, when I ended up watching the boxing on Sky down the Conqueror, then became engrossed in conversations/new meetings with interesting people. But I caught Martin Klapper and Martin Jezek's set: video backdrop with electronics which were loud and crunchy but always moving forward, falling almost into conventional rhythms at times which kept them on track. Again, the performance filled the time with a logic that manifested through its form. Good stuff – and a Saturday feel now, hall crowded and buzzing early. This was going to be a sweaty, uncomfortable night... yet even the mob would fall silent when impressed, which is the hallmark of this festival. Where I was standing by the merch stalls, I thought I had taken a good vantage point for PeterFengler's segment, but more and more people pressed in – yet settled down quickly enough to enjoy the 'show.' Entitled 'Baroque/Non Baroque, I think. Which was as if Samuel Beckett had scripted a surreal cabaret for Tommy Cooper. Completely deadpan, based on repetitions of actions, stances and speech that seemed to inject obscure meanings into banal gestures, Fengler held this audience, slowly overcoming puzzlement and random chatter. And he was very funny. Suddenly jumping onto a low table, bending forward on hands and knees, lifting a leg and holding the pose. Bouncing a ball on the stage – my OCD took over and I found myself counting the number of repetitive acts until I stopped myself – tapping bits of wood. Scrunching a plastic cup while wrenching his head around in both hands to simulate colliding vertabrae. Again – difficult to describe why this was entertaining. He stretched patience to breaking point, then you realised that he was skilfully and dryly hilarious.

YouTube to the rescue again gives a flavour of the man...

The next section I caught was PC Fencott (aided by Robin Fencott), veteran of sound/word experimentation for many years, another link to the late Bob Cobbing, one of the dominant spirits in the air this weekend, it seemed.

Playing with some computer graphics that manipulated words, he presented 'Paradiddle Rox,' his voice processed into loops and echoes, creating a wild choir from his solo readings. But his best piece for me was a poem about the experience of sea-diving off the coast somewhere oop north. Foregrounding literally the poetics of breath, he simulated the gulps of air in a diver's mouthpiece in between the lines that described the experience of submergence and movement under water. Catching the paradox: freedom and the claustrophobia of being trapped in the body's need for oxygen, the element of danger in navigating under the sea. He held the audience rapt – then brought them in to join in on the last piece which involved singing out lines that echoed across the hall in overlapping waves. Like folk music almost, but more interesting... How this generates its own order is ultimately fascinating and just using the most basic flexible units available – human voices. Superb.

Catch some of his Colour out of Space performance here http://www.youtube.com/user/CliveFencott

I moved forward and found a space by a door.  The crowd was filling the hall now, with more and more pressing in.  Leather jacket off as the heat was rising from the proximity of so many - upon which someone managed to spill beer.  An accident, a jogged arm.  I realised as more people were struggling to get in that this venue must be approaching some danger limit for occupancy. We were waiting for Rainonbashi and Dylan Nyoukis: someone in a blindfold slipped by and crouched briefly as disembodied noises and voices came through the sound system. Setting an eery atmosphere... The figure disappeared into the crowd, tracked by flashes that came from his seemingly randomly taking of digital photographs. An experiment in unease? I decided to go and left for the Conqueror and the boxing. A fascinating and potentially disturbing experience but I don't like crowds when they are jammed so close and figured with some incipient paranoia that it would just take one psychedelic voyager in the crush to flip into bad vibesville and a stampede could have been on.

Not so much seen and heard, then, but most of it satisfyingly hitting the right spots.

For now - before the other reviews go up - collage from Colour out of Space Festival, 2011

Lots of distractions this week but the remaining two reviews will go up by the weekend (honest). But just stumbled over this via Anthony Donovan out of Dylan Nyoukis.  A reminder not so much of all the great stuff I caught but all the good shit I missed...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Friday night, 11th November, 2011...

I got down to this new main venue for the first evening of 'Colour out of Space,' The Old Market, picked up my ticket and wristband, checked the schedules, had a drink in the bar and realised that: a) I don't really like Peroni and b) I would probably spend more time between acts in the Conqueror just round the corner, a great old-school boozer with a friendly welcome, which I had scoped out on psychogeographic reconnaissance the previous evening.  (Butcombe bitter, yum. Double Jack D – cheap. More yum).

The venue itself, a converted market hall, is high-ceilinged, a larg-ish space with a few chairs scattered which geriatrics/the knackered like myself would eagerly pounce on over the next few days. A bit like that kid's game, except you grab a seat when the music starts... The running order looked as tight as ever with quick turnarounds – everything was going to happen in the one space but rotating from the main stage to a small stage situated near the back, to the side, plus various performances that would take place out in the open, as it were. Gave a bazaar-like quality to the listening experience, wandering round from each set. Tonight this would not be too much of a problem – good crowd but not too oppressive.

First up: the Eisteddfod kicked off with Tobias Kirsten and John Lunds, a sax/drum duo from Copenhagen. Short repeated phrases on baritone sax, hammered out in tandem with the crashing drums. Free jazz meets Steve Reich, if that makes sense – improvised but hurled into repeating patterns that subtly shift, driven along by relentless drums. Lunds switches saxes, moving up to tenor, the lines get longer, freer. An exhilarating start...

Next, Infinite Gaah, Tom Roberts, a Northampton denizen transplanted to Brighton. I missed most of this short segment and came in to see the small side stage surrounded. Didn't have much idea what was going on – seemed like a good time as the crowd were enjoying it. And there was a lot of fun over the three days – Colour out of Space has always provides a large variety of musics but is never too po-faced, unlike, say, Freedom of the City, which has become somewhat, shall we say, ponderous. The young crowd help – this is not a congregation of old gits like myself, sat around scratching their beards in solemn witness, thank fuck. (Although I wasn't the oldest here).

Anthony Donovan and Clive Graham followed, on the main stage. I managed to get a good spot down front, stage left – not that position mattered much in this hall as the sound was superb throughout.  Duo  electronics, sat at the table looking quite serious, they produced an orchestral, busy movement that did not falter. Which is the test of all these improvising artists/bands – to fill the time without noodling and to hold the audience. I know Anthony's work from other areas but this was very impressive. They fitted together well, not getting in each other's way.

Back to the bear pit – getting crowded now. I hovered on the edge of the crowd, got a few glimpses of Aki Onda in action, who has a wonderful sense of the theatric/visual to frame his music. Which comes from manipulating cassette tapes. With minimal resources he produced amazing sounds, warm and organic, etched with harsher sounds further in. Starting in pastoral mode, a cuckoo calling, a bell sounding, tapes looped and crossed. Very calm, meditative, the ritualistic feeling extended when he proceeded to walk round the edge of the crowd, some sitting, some standing, all in rapt attention, a small amplifier with Walkman attached, gently swinging like a censer, wafting sound. Ok, fanciful – but there seemed a spiritual aspect somewhere. Bringing in drones now and sharper fragments of song, things shifted into an edgier area. Nearing the end, he suddenly grabbed hold of a lightbulb which hung down from the ceiling on a wire and swung it in a long looping arc just over the heads of the assembled, some ducking instinctively as it described its swirling movements. Wonder what Elf and Safety would have said. The light spun round giving an eery finish to a superb performance. In a weekend when it was difficult to pick favourites – this came near.

Couple of short observations:

Wreck and Drool and Smack Music 7 – three piece ensemble. In my notebook I scrawled 'Brilliant! A BAND!' Vocalised sounds sprung across electronic movements, the whole being loose in its expansive possibilities and yet tight because of the artists' concentrations.

Lichen starts walking round playing his sax, moving over to electronics and loops that produce LOUD throbbing music. Punchy.

The last act I caught ( I didn't stay right to the end) was a brilliant flourish: Crank Sturgeon and 

id m theftable. A duo who truly tests one's abilities to describe them. Vaudeville on acid? was one scrawled note. They were extremely funny while producing a continuous barrage of intelligent sound, showcased by their intensely wacky visual éclat and their ability to engage the audience – such as crazed, bemused chants repeated over and over by id, echoed back by the crowd in wild call and response mode as Crank used thick cellotape with a contact mike attached to produce a battery of sounds as he ran backwards and forwards across the stage, securing the tape to either side, producing several rows, on which he hung himself at one point, arms akimbo in an almost parody of the Crucifixion. Jesus on a washing line... Later, producing a number of cut-out phalluses which were attached – cocks pegged out in a row. Some smutty interplay with these of course. Bizarre – and hilarious.

Loud, raucous, rude. Loved it. Some weird area where performance art crashes into standup comedy, noise and home made electronics (Crank had a merch stall throughout and was flogging his own custom built contact mikes. Nearly bought one but I've a drawer full already and a boy's gotta economise.  But check out his web page - they look really good).  Crank is a whispy bearded thin prankster, id, big, burly full-bearded with an air of outraged bewilderment at the world.  The chemistry between them is superb.  Of course, I share religious beliefs with Crank – also being an ordained minister. (Available for weddings etc). A side thought: American acts, in the main, always seem to make an effort to engage. A big difference usually between them and the Europeans...

I was tired, run out of steam, left for a brief one in the Conqueror and walked back down the sea-front, which left me even more tired when I got to the hotel! Further than I had figured... 

But a great opening night.

Return to God's Little Acre... Colour out of Space reviews to follow...

Back home in God's Little Acre... oh joy.  Had a stroll round the Artist's Quarter and a slow pint in the Unicorn where I had a look at the usual mess of notes I make at festivals.  This year's Colour out of Space has prompted even more bizarre scrawls/signs/smears in the old moleskine - given that there was a large theme of sound poetry etc perhaps the ghost of Bob Cobbing crept into my hotel when I was akip and vented his inscribed pleasures on those pages from beyond the beyond... (Stranger things have happened - he was certainly invoked a few times over the weekend).  But reviews will follow, honest.  Just to say - a big shout out to Dylan and co for another trailblazer of skronk and wahoo loaded with mucho epiphanies, which is as it should be - and hopefully will be again next year.  They got the vote out in high numbers.   The Old Market a good venue, in tandem with the afternoon stuff at the Sallis Benney.  So much was enjoyed and now being mulled over.  Fucking cold back here as well after such a brilliant few days...
Later...

Jeez, am I hungover...i But a great afternoon of film and music at the sallis binney venue.

fest rolls...

Colour out of space off to great start... limited comments as on phone ... reviews will follow...

Off to Brighton...

Hopefully I am off to Brighton to Colour out of Space tomorrow.  Best fest in the UK, for me...  No doubt reviews will follow...

New Posts on the Book Blog...

A couple of new posts on the book blog - including a review by John Bentham for the Tiger Folk newsletter.

One for Bert...

Bert Jansch is dead and that is both a very sad loss and a great shock as it had seemed that he was up and about again, recovered from his initial problem with lung cancer. There you go... Bert was a big fixture in my younger life, helping me, (after Bob Dylan) convert to an interest in folk/acoustic music and an engagement with the Brit folk scene of the sixties which for a brief few years was actually a cool place to inhabit, mainly because of Bert and his sidekick John Renbourn and a couple of other faces from the Soho scene, centred round Les Cousins in Greek Street but taking in the old Scots Hoose pub at the top of Old Compton Street where I saw him perform some stunning sets with a nonchalant, tousled grace. There were bad nights, apparently. Too much booze and rumours of darker areas, the whole romantic troubadour schtick. But I don't remember seeing any: the occasional wobble but no more. Maybe this is selective, but Bert was probably no more or less of a raker than the rest of us – and we were legion. The music was the main hit: he had, after all, written the late Buck Polly's epitaph after he went down to smack – 'Needle of Death,' hardly a celebration of opiate abuse. But all this was and is irrelevant in the larger sweep of things...

The music. Bill Broonzy is always quoted as a big influence but alongside that, I always wondered if somewhere down the line he had copped an ear to Scrapper Blackwell's percussive acoustic guitar leads from those classic blues tracks with Leroy Carr in the twenties and thirties – that snapping hit on the strings which gave his playing such an edge. Maybe not – maybe he figured it out for himself. But there was a lot of blues – and jazz – in his playing. Listen to the seminal 'Bert and John' where Jansch and John Renbourne blend their guitars into a new style that could go anywhere. Called 'folk baroque' – which always seemed too pretty and limiting to me, but we need our labels, I suppose. Bert was also, in my book, an underrated singer who knew how to place a song over his unique guitar accompaniments, maybe not the most technical of vocalists, but what is technique? It is there to serve the song, and Bert had an intuitive feel for whatever he sang, his slightly gruff delivery giving a vibrato-less edge that cut through to the essence, the emotional weight balanced just right. Never over-emoting, which especially suited his renditions of traditional material, as well as his own material... His voice was a paradox that mirrored his persona – intimate and yet with a certain distance. Down to earth, yet possessing a certain mystique... Returning to his guitar playing, yeah, sure, no doubt he copped some licks from Davy Graham, as who didn't? – but he had rapidly developed his own style and Bert was a much better singer, whose records stand up better as well, in my opinion. Davy, for all his hubristic wonder, lives on in my memory as primarily a live performer, erratically brilliant, with one classic album that he made with Shirley Collins - tellingly, a singer - the rest unfortunately, for me, coming nowhere near capturing his magic on stage. Screw the comparisons anyway. They were both unique, as was and is John Renbourn who came at the music from another angle. Put it all together and you have a style that flows out of the narrow confines of 'folk' into something new and vibrant. A fusion that meant something, as opposed to much of the vacuity performed under that name when jazz met rock (Miles Davis excepted)...

I loved Bert's solo sets and his duets with John R. Memories of nights down Les Cousins mesmerised by the crisscrossing dance they created. But maybe the band Pentangle took the heights of their influences and originalities and expanded them to a different level to create a music that looked back to folk roots without being overtly ridiculous, irrelevant or twee and forwards to the present and future. We all have our prejudices – with regard to 'folk' music plus rhythm section and some amplification, I rate Pentangle very highly as the ones who got it best in the U.K. Fairport, for me, forever lumpy, clumping around like a bunch of cider drunks at a bad barn dance, only redeemed by the sublime Sandy Denny when she was with them. Pentangle were almost emblematic of the Les Cousins cool strain of music that came out of London at that time, jazzy, subtle, blending the guitar styles into the bass and drums to take Bert and John's playing to new exploratory spaces. Although by the time they were coming together, they had moved up the road a bit to the Horseshoe pub on Tottenham Court Road – probably for spatial reasons as much as anything else – bass, drums, guitars and singer would have been a crush down in Les Cousins. And then on to greater glories... But I still cherish the fading memories of that scruffy old crucible of the new on Greek Street where I first was enchanted by Bert.

And Pentangle came back recently, if only for a brief shot, now that one of the points on the star has disappeared, not as nostalgia but a vital force still, if the reviews are to be believed. Coupled to Bert's resurgent profile, maybe there is some small consolation in the thought that he died at the top his game, after several years of refound fame and recognition. Maybe.

Colour out of Space Returns...

Can't really afford it - but now the book has been published, I feel that I should treat myself.  And my favourite festival over the last few years has been the Brighton bash: 'Colour out of Space.'  Last year it did not happen due to various reasons and there was deep sadness in my autumn.  The previous couple of years - see reviews for 2008 here, here and here/2009 here, here and here - I'd gone down to Brighton for stimulating, exciting, weekends with loads of musics that I really like and some I encountered for the first time at a well run extravaganza, great sound good, great organisation, in a cool location.  This year apparently the festival will split between the Sallis Benney theatre (afternoons) and the Old Market, Hove (evenings).  Full details out later this week, apparently and you can get an early bird inclusive weekend ticket for a mere £25 (link on festival web site - I'm getting lazy).  Been a hermit recently for various reasons so I looking forward to having my ears/brain/eyes stretched. 

Here we go (at last!)... 'Don Partridge and Company' just published...

Finally we got there... 'Don Partridge and Company' has just been published and is available online from my storefront on Lulu/RawMusics HERE... Links also on the book blog HERE...

Available in either paperback hard copy or digital download pdf.

And here's the guv'nor - The Earl of Mustard -  in action, 1968 

Almost there... and a couple of vids on the blog...

The proof of the book has printed and is on its way - once I've checked it, I'll do another, just to make sure everything is ok - then we should be able to go ahead and publish on 27th September. In the meantime, another teaser on the book blog, here... A couple of rare movie clips about the Albert Hall Buskers' Concert of 1969...

New Publication Date...

I've had a problem with some of the embedded photo image files in the master document for the book 'Don Partridge and Company' so I've put the publication date back a couple of weeks while it gets sorted. I spent yesterday re-embedding the images and creating a new master document which has gone back to the on line publisher. Assuming no more problems, I still want to run a few test copies through before publishing, just to double check. New publication date (fingers crossed!): Tuesday 27th September.

Calum Duell...

A buzz going round the extended families tonight - just been sent a vid of Calum Duell, my daughter's young (well, not so young anymore) brother, who is turning out to be an accomplished musician already.
He has a YouTube vid up:





A lot of poise in one so young...

New posts on Don Partridge and Company blog.

A couple of clips of buskers, taken from the film 'The London that Nobody Knows,' have been posted on the Don Partridge and Company blog - plus details of the upcoming publication. Due to go on Wednesday 14th September...

Free downloads at The Lows and the Highs...

Murray Ward of The Lows and the Highs sends this info - grab yourself a bargain!

We've now sold out (or have very limited stock) of a number of our early releases.

You can now download them for free:

HI/LO001 - The (plexus) Collective - Warner/Ward: The Alephs
HI/LO002 - dj_spleenbaby - Gone with the Wind vs. The Last Starfighter
HI/LO003 - The (plexus) Collective - Warner/Ward: Axiom of Choice
HI/LO004 - The (plexus) Collective -Ward: Ekstasis
HI/LO005 - The (plexus) Collective - Warner/Ward/Teledu: Differend
HI/LO006 - The (plexus) Collective - Warner/Ward/Teledu: A Hopeless Task
HI/LO007 - The Failed NASA Experiment - First Frost
HI/LO008 - The Failed NASA Experiment - Ap Helion EP
HI/LO009 - The Failed NASA Experiment - Ohrwurm

Visit The Lows and the Highs... and follow the links to the albums on the Catalogue page...

Stinking Badger...

Then there was Stinking Badger... Dave Teledu, A-Bander and co-member of Plexus with myself and Murray Ward, has a solo album out under this moniker on The Lows and the Highs.  Sonic explorations from north of where I am... Soiling Charge...