music

jane and i went to see the amazing super furry animals last night.

they are from another planet (wales)

this evening Pure Reason Revolution played a local gig so i went along. totally fantastic !

here are two of the support bands
wire jesus

my luminaries

and here are dave and em, fellow gigsters, and celebrity drummer andrew:

compare pure reason revolution’s effects to julian cope’s

plenty to do over the next few weeks. it’s bank holiday weekend in the UK and i’m planning on going to the Reading Festival at the weekend, and i’ll also be entering a few photos in to the Swallowfield Show.
those who are prepared to travel further should consider this excellent fiesta in near Hamburg/Lübeck in Germany on the 16-18th September. It features loads of cosmic music including the legendary Faust (who are touring the UK in the autumn)

here’s a badge by a drain. it’s for popular beat combo The Killers. perhaps the government should make a law requiring all those intent on killing to wear one of these badges.
if you saw someone wearing the badge you could phone the police and have them dealt with.

i sorted out my ‘gig crate’ yesterday morning and got rid of all the broken wires and old biros hiding underneath my regular guitar cables and effects box.

kezia helped me with the tidying and to reward her i let her sing through my delay pedal. then esther joined her. here are the sonic results.
chuffa chuffa choo choo (as written by esther): download video clip (1Meg)
random strangeness: download video clip (half Meg)
Movies are in mpg format so hope that’s ok

Queen were playing in Hyde Park last night on the Live8 stage (delayed a week due to last week’s incidents). there were lots of Queen fans all over the park as i walked through.
it reminded me of being back at university – i was an engineering student and everyone on my course wore white trainers, blue jeans and white t-shirt (except me. i only wore black in those days)

remember craig from here and here ? well he’s bought himself a washboard.
oh dear.

we saw it before, now see it after

zoomy inny:

and here’s another one from Hyde Park the next day:

i’m not going to Live8 today but plenty of other people are. the venue is the same place as the Wireless festival was held in earlier this week (so you’ll know about the secret watching place).
if you stood by this crossing with really strong binoculars you’ll probably get knocked out the way by thousands of people going to the concert, but if you managed to stand still and looked down your binos you’ll see the screen at the side of the stage.
you might have to click on the picture to see what i mean on this (unless you’ve got a massive monitor)

here’s a teeny bit of the queue of people waiting to get a ticket to watch Live8 on the telly in Hyde Park.

it was hot this evening so i walked back from a work event in Westminster to Paddington Station. Unfortunately it took ages to cross Hyde Park as they’ve built a concert venue all over it.
today loads of great bands had been playing as part of the Wireless Festival. I went by around 9pm and Keene were about to play. i’m not too keen on them (clever ey?) but i do love the Secret Machines who were also playing. i would also liked to have seen Supergrass and the Bunnymen.
but this was all academic as i didn’t go in. But i did walk past this spot on the perimeter where people were sitting watching the big screens on the side of the stage !

Hyde Park in london seems to be a very popular place for bands to perform. unfortunately it makes walking through the park a pain as you have to go round the massive cordoned off area.
here is where New Order will play on friday night. you can just see the stage over the barriers.
and there’s some lost people pointing as well to add the amusement.

jane and her guitar reflected in my bass guitar pickup

Total volume of music on my computer:
I use Napster To Go so only tend to rip my more obscure CDs on to my PC (about 4GB’s worth).
If you’ve got Napster you can search my Library (member name funkypancake) which now has around 45,000 tracks in it.
i dump around 5GB of these at a time on to my Zen Micro and listen to them day and night.

Playing right now:
The Fall War Against Intelligence

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:
Mind Train, Yoko Ono
Sister Ray, Velvet Underground
I Think I’m In Love, Spiritualised
Rasputin, Boney M (our wedding first dance tune)
Gordoni Mix – Brakes on mix, Air
The last CD i bought

i’m just loving anything faust at the moment.
Radio Stations I listen to:
XFM
Radio 2 (Mark Radcliffe)
Resonance for potluck
where next ?
i’m working my way through the Record Collector 100 Greatest British Psychedelic Records. It’s pleasantly surprising how many of these are on Napster !

thanks to russell davies for asking me to do this (i quite enjoyed it in the end)
i’m not going to pass this on specifically to 5 other people, but if any other readers have a blog and want to tell everything then let me know !

here is my neice sarah hitting her brother’s electric guitar with a drum stick. the guitar has real strings and pickups and a little on board amplifier.
the battery was running out so the guitar had a fantastic distortion sound. sarah’s drums stick bashing and scratching created a nice post-grunge throwback vibe.

reader Vin sent me this fantastic photo of a find in Burlington Gardens, Acton.
it’s a record sleeve for Leicester’s favourite son Englebert Humperdink “Love Is All”. The record itself is sadly missing. But what a great find !
Englebert’s brother used to run the fruit shop in the village where i grew up you know.
fancy that

click for big

i’ve mentioned my friends’ band the Pure Reason Revolution before. They’ve just released a new single. it’s a 12 minute epic and well worth a buy.
here it is on the shelves in Virgin Megastore (CD and 10″ vinyl)and it’s even on Napster

visit the Pure Reason Website
watch the cosmic video all the way through in full here:
Low Quality Connection
Medium Quality Connection
High Quality Connection