Part of the reason that updates to this site were shall we say, limited during December, was that I had been asked to write some reviews for a website in America.Previously I've sent a couple of pieces into The Global Cafe myspace site, and when I sent them my list of albums of the year (see below) they wrote to say that they were compiling a top 50 for their newly revamped website, and could I write a short piece on ten of the records which appeared on both of our lists. It was quite an interesting thing for me to think about the phrasing and structure of those pieces and was good fun to do. When their website is updated I'll put a link here so that you can see how badly I misunderstood your favourite album of the year.

It's actually been a very quiet period for us musically of late. We did go to see Fuzz Against Junk on December 23rd as our friend Steve is the drummer in the band and it was his birthday that day. They played with Crippled Black Phoenix, who seemed to have a little less light and shade then when we saw them previously. There are rumours that Fuzz Against Junk may be involved in an upcoming live show in conjunction with the 6music show "The Freakzone", which would be great for them.

On the music buying front, Orynthia gave me a copy of the solo album from Jarvis Cocker which I'm enjoying. I picked up a copy of the debut album from former Imperial Music main man RLF, he now records under the name Bass Clef and the record is called "A smile is a cure which straightens most things" and it's really rather wonderful. If I'd heard it earlier in December it would certainly made it into my chart, in fact it was listed as the tenth best dance album of last year by those hipsters at The Sun! The record itself is reminiscent of the work of people like The Sabres Of Paradise and Mad Professor, heavy on the bass with fascinating aural soundscapes it's well worth investigating.

So that's almost it for 2006, we've had a nice time over the Xmas period. On Xmas Eve over recent years we've spent my birthday visiting some of the newer attractions in Bristol, this year was looking a little tricky as many places closed due to the fact that it was falling on a Sunday. Eventually Orynthia had a stroke of genius and realised that one of the older attractions would be open, so for the first time in years, we took the walk across The Downs to visit Bristol Zoo.

As luck would have it several friends were having a knockabout game of football on The Downs, so we could pause briefly to watching exerting themselves before continuing our journey. Many things have changed since we were last in The Zoo, the majority of the large animals have gone, so no more Elephants, Polar Bears, Camels, Giraffes and the like. Luckily they still have lots of entertaining creatures with plenty of Monkey choices to keep us amused.

The last time (and only previous joint visit) we went to the Zoo has stayed in our memory, thanks to a fantastic lack of customer service from the old cafeteria. I can't remember the exact scenario but it went something like this. The menu had the usual array of food that was available in 1980's Bristol, very much in the "chips with everything mould" So you could have sausage, egg and chips or bacon, egg and chips amongst other splendid choices. However, I asked if I could have sausage, egg and bacon. They obviously had all these ingredients just a case of working a cost I assumed. So it was rather odd to be told that I could not have that as it was not a choice on the menu card. It was a classic example of the English approach to food and service.

Things have moved on a little since then, but to remind myself of the good old days, we went for fish and chips with the obvious choice of drink - mulled wine, all very nice too. As darkness started to fall, we continued our journey and I particularly enjoyed watching the Seals playing around, the Red Panda and some amazing birds.After that we took a lovely walk through Clifton in order catch up with some friends, before heading home at around 10pm.

Christmas day was spent with various family and friends in several houses, before returning home with Orynthia's mother and brother who were both spending the night with us. I obviously slept well, as it 11:15 on Boxing Day morning before I awoke from my slumbers. Then Orynthia dropped me down to the Nova Scotia, so I could catch up the Ashton Gate faithful before our 2-2 draw. Following the game a few old friends and associated children came over to our place for tea, cakes and cheese, some how several bottles of wine were consumed as well. Because many of our friends have moved around it was the first time that some of them had seen each other in years, it was nice to be a catalyst and watch some (very) old friendships being renewed.

Records of the year?

BEST RECORDINGS OF 2006

1. TOM WAITS – Orphans
2. HOT CHIP – The Warning
3. CAMERA OBSCURA – Let’s Get Out Of This County
4. SUFJAN STEVENS – The Avalanche
5. M. WARD – Post
6. ABSENTEE – Schmotime
7. THE DECEMBERISTS – The Crane Wife
8. BELLE & SEBASTIAN – The Life Pursuit
9. JOAN AS POLICEWOMAN –Real Life
10. MICAH P HINSON – Micah P Hinson And The Opera Circuit

11. Math And Physics Club – Math And Physics Club
12. Yo La Tengo –I’m Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
13. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Ballad Of The Broken Seas
14. The Essex Green – Cannibal Sea
15. The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics
16. The Strokes – First Impressions Of Earth
17. Joanna Newsome – Ys
18. Sparklehorse – Dreamt For Years In The Belly of A Mountain
19. Tilly & The Wall – Bottoms of Barrels
20. The Dears – Gang Of Losers
21. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am……
22. Joe Volk – Derwnt Waters Sound
23. Various – The Kids At The Club: An Indiepop Compilation
24. Jim Noir – Tower Of Love
25. The Divine Comedy – Victory For The Comic Muse
26. Francois & The Atlas Mountains – The People To Forget
27. Sol Seppy – The Bells Of 1 2
28. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
29. Little Name – How To Swim And Live
30. Rose Melberg – Cast Away The Clouds
31. Peter, Bjorn & John – Writer’s Block
32. Amy Millan – Honey From the Tombs
33. Sondre Lerche & The Faces Down Quartet – Duper Sessions
34. Various – Stones Throw; Ten Years
35. Tapes ‘n Tapes – The loon
36. Louis Slipperz – Bareback Instrumentals
37. Lambchop – Damaged
38. Cut Chemist – The Audience’s Listening
39. The Concretes – In Colour
40. Electric President – Electric President

A lovely morning in Redland

Well right now what is there to do other than listen to fantastic new triple CD release from Tom Waits – Orphans and reading everything that you could ever wish to know about the man, his music and his life at the amazing Tom Waits Library!

So the latest Ashes started in Australia overnight, sounds like it was a pretty tough day for the English. I managed to avoid checking on the score until around 6am, by then Australia were well in control, bringing back memories on childhood for me. It feels as though I woke up early on many freezing cold winter mornings, switched on the transistor radio which I had taken to bed with me the previous evening, only to hear that England were being soundly thrashed by a rampant Australian side.

Listening to a small radio in bed in one of the great joys in life those days. I guess I, like so many others of my age started by listening to Radio Luxembourg under the bed clothes whilst nervously waiting for my mum to tell me to "turn that off!" The reception for Radio Luxembourg in Bristol was pretty bad and the signal would ebb and flow, leaving you with the joyful sound of static for minutes at a time. Maybe it was this which caused my love of tuneless experimental electronic music? On occasions I would wake with a start late at night, realising that I had drifted off and the batteries on the radio has died. Now this was in the days before rechargeable batteries and we didn't really keep much of a battery stock in the house, so the prospect of several days without a radio was a worrying prospect.

Eventually I graduated to having a radio which I could plug into wall and keep on the table next to my bed, amazingly this didn't happen until I was on the verge of leaving school and starting my first job. By then I had made the move from Radio Luxembourg to John Peel on Radio 1. I dipped my musical ear in and out of the Peel show for a few years, until the festive 50 of 1978 saw becoming a regular listener. To ensure I didn't miss anything I would record the shows as well, so that I could play the tapes the next day, this would ensure that none of those fantastically obscure tunes slipped past me.

To this day late night radio is an essential part of my (and Orynthia's life). Our companion in the bedroom is Mark Radcliffe, consistently entertaining - sometimes just fantastic. Whenever he has Simon Armitage or Stuart Maconie as a guest of the show the silliness quota goes through the roof, and we lie in bed chuckling away at the wonderfully frivolous banter.

Following the postponement of our football match on Sunday morning, the weekend wasn't a tiring as anticipated. It also gave us time to have a proper look around the Totterdown art trail on Sunday afternoon, rather than spending it in bed as planned. As ever we saw some interesting stuff, especially the "Silver House" on Hill street, which quickly became the talk of the crowd as people moved from house to house. Saw a few things which we liked, but in the end we only spent a couple of pounds on a card.

The Friday night launch party featuring Suzuki Boom Boom (see picture) was fun, a ridiculous number of people squeezed into the abode of Mr Ritchie Paradise, to see his latest band swing into action.

Sunday evenings Grumpy Man, was a rather quiet affair, we'd like to think that it was the dreadful weather which kept the heaving crowds away rather than tunes. I don't think that we will be having one in December, but some exciting plans are coming together for the new year. We are hoping to get more involved with bands that fit the Grumpy Man style and we've lined up a treat for February, when Geoff Barrow of Portishead fame will become an special guest Grumpy Man for the night.

Tomorrow night we are going to a lecture on 30's ceramics at Bristol University, we've both got an interest in ceramics from the 20's to the 60's with our collection of "Homemaker" stuff holding pride of place. Hopefully it won't be too academic for untutored admirers such as ourselves, it's going to be a bit of a dash from work as it's a 6pm start, rumour has it that they provide free refreshments - always a sure way to attract our interest.

Well the good news is that I don’t have perforated eardrum after all. It’s just an ear infection, which should clear up soon, with the help of the cute little ear spray, which was prescribed for me.

Playing football was interesting as I couldn’t hear any of those helpful “man-on”, “time” “ lump it over here” shouts which are an integral part of the game. Added to that the fact that I’ve played once in the last month, I have to say that it resulted in a fairly woeful performance. The mighty Bryan Munich have a league game this Sunday, I hope that I can raise game from the lows of Monday night or I’m in for a miserable morning.

It’s actually going to be a pretty busy weekend, on Friday afternoon we are going to one of the launch events for “Front Room – The Totterdown Art Trail”. Sadly we won’t have a chance to have a complete look around during the rest of the weekend. It’s a shame as we really enjoyed it last year; of all the art trails in Bristol I think it works the best, mainly because of the compact nature of the display area. It’s really easy to visit all the houses on foot, unlike some of the other trails. As well looking at some interesting art, it is of course a wonderful opportunity to nose around other people’s houses, some of which are amazing. If you live in Bristol and have a spare hour or so, you really should go along and be nosey!

So what of the rest of the weekend? Well on Saturday I’m meeting up a friend for brunch before see City in action for the first time in ages (due to our trips to New York and London). Talking of City they have given me an interesting idea, on December 3rd my mum will celebrate her 75th birthday, sometime on that weekend City will be playing an FA cup game (date yet to be confirmed). Wouldn’t it be great to have my mum running out as the city mascot, having put up of years of obsessive football following from both my dad and I, what could be finer than going to first game at the age of 75! Seriously, I don’t think it would fair to put her through that; we will have to come up with another plan.

As previously mentioned I’m playing football on Sunday morning, before DJ’ing at Mr Wolfs in the evening at the latest Grumpy Man event. Sadly, I’m going to need a bit of a kip in the afternoon, otherwise I may make it through the evening, but I’ll be dead for the rest of the week.

Such is the sad state of affairs as I approach my 45th birthday . Not sure how much longer I’ll continue playing football as the recovery time, gets longer after every game. I’ll have to think of my 45 favourite 45RPM records and make myself a little play-list for my iPod, I missed the chance to do my 33 favourite 33 RPM records, will I still be around to list my top 78, 78’s ?

Every now and then I get a bit of a problem with an excessive build up of wax in my ears, leading to problems with my hearing. Over the past 10 days or so, the hearing in my left ear has been very poor, so I have been preparing myself for a visit to see the nurse in order to have my ear syringed.

Some of you may never have been through this experience, you have my sympathy. Few things in life are as startling as the change from virtual deafness to crystal clear hearing. Of course this does cause some interesting feelings to rush around your confused body. I remember the shock of hearing the rustle of clothing as my trouser legs lightly scratched against each other on the walk to the car. The car journey home was an amazing experience, I was convinced that all the doors had fallen of the car, so loud was the sound of the engine, passing cars and each gear change. The gentle swish of wiper blade across the windscreen was replaced by the sound of a jet engine whizzing in front of me.

At last I made it home, too risky to try the radio, TV or CD player, so I opted for a glass of water and a scan through the paper. Obviously the sound of running water from the tap was akin to finding oneself at the base of the tumultuous rush of a 100-foot waterfall. Time to sit and read the paper, this was back in the day of The Guardian being in its full broadsheet glory, pretty soon I realised that even this was going to be an impossible task. The noise of those huge pages crashing and crackling as I turned the pages was like sound of a thousand bonfire night parties exploding around my head. If only I read a tabloid newspaper, things may have been a little better.

Of course fairly soon, these amazing sensations begin to recede and once again it’s safe to put the kettle on, without thinking that the latest space shuttle launch is taking place in your kitchen.

This morning I went along to NHS walk in centre, only to be told that they no longer carry out “ear irrigation” there, I would need to see the nurse at my doctors. The receptionist said they might as well take a look at the offending ear as I had made the journey down. Less than 5 minutes later a nurse was looking into my ears and advising that my “good” ear was pretty blocked up, however my bad ear was not! She was concerned that she couldn’t see my ear drum, so she called a colleague into to have a look and they decided that I may well have a perforated eardrum and would need to see my doctor tomorrow. I was a little concerned on hearing this news, but they assured me that if it is a perforation, these things normally heal themselves. Let’s see what the doctor has to say tomorrow.

Last night I put my ear problems to one side (the left!) and went with Orynthia and Ashton to see a rare screening of the 1947 film “Dreams That Money Can Buy” with a live score being performed by The Real Tuesday Weld, with help from Cibelle and David Piper. It was great fun; the film itself is fairly mad surrealist take on the idea of someone being able to help people to have dreams, for financial reward of course. The people who helped with the creation of the film and dream sequences included Max Earnst, Fernand Leger, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.

Of course with those people involved, it was a pretty crazy visual spectacle, the live score and narration was subtle and entertaining. The performers were split into two groups of four with the screen in the central area; they were dressed in period clothing and lounged around in comfortable furniture between contributions. It was a little like watching the recording of a radio broadcast (with amazing Technicolor images) and was really rather fantastic, even with only one good ear!

So we’ve been back from New York for 3 weeks now and I think I’m almost ready to shake off the cold that I picked up just after we returned. The whole experience has left me feeling like I’m really on the threshold of old age, I have no energy or inclination to much at all over the last couple of weeks. My feet ache when I walk, if Phlegm was tradable on the stock exchange I would be a very rich man indeed, sleep has been fractured and inconsistent and I’ve been moaning and groaning (like I’m am now!).

I’ve decided to let my subscription to The New Yorker lapse for a while. I still love the magazine, but I just can’t keep up with the reading, I hate being 3-4 weeks behind which I always appear to be these days, because I’m behind I try to catch up by reading during breaks at work, leading to a decline in the number of books that I can I read. I’m sure that I’ll return but we just need a break from each other at the moment.

Talking of books, I am reading something that I picked up whilst we were in the States, It’s called “It’s alright now” by Charles Chadwick. A strange meandering and epic take on a mans life, written in an almost diary like style, with huge chunks of the book describing very small events in minute detail.

It’s received quite a lot of interest both here and in the states as it’s the debut novel from Mr Chadwick and he is in his 70’s – hope for us all then! I’m quite attracted to the way things move at a very slow pace, unlike like so much of the things which are put in front of us these days, this takes it time. Hopefully the journey will be worth it, in many ways it reminds me of an old fashioned game of test cricket, subtle change emerge slowly rather than in a blitz of frenzied activity like it would in a one day match.

The C86 bash at the ICA was great fun, sometimes nostalgia can be a good thing.

In the bar area the people from Rough Trade had set up a small shop area selling CD's from some of the more obscure bands of the era, as well as a few more contemporary things. The walls were covered by a slideshow of pictures of bands, record sleeves, fanzines and anything else that would bring the memories flooding back.

I must admit that I didn't know much about The Wolfhounds, I bought one single from them back in the day, so I was pleasantly surprised by their powerful and punchy set. They were much more akin to someone like The Gang of Four than most of the bands linked with the C86 sound. Before Phil Wilson and Big John from The June Brides took to the stage we were shown an extract from a forthcoming film documenting the indie scene of the 1980's. It featured some amusing footage of The Jesus & Mary Chain, including the tumultuous climax of one of their gigs when the crowd decided that would like to rearrange the PA system!

Phil and John breezed their way through a series of classics from The June Brides, cue big grins all-round. We did have a strange moment mid way through the set, we have been corresponding with Phil over recent months and he kindly dedicated a song to us, for next minute we were caught up in a strange minor celebratory world! Someone dashed up and asked to take our picture, then I heard someone else in the crowd say "Tom and Orynthia, they're from Bristol"! What was going on? The person taking picture was Phil Wilson's wife and the person who mentioned was a friend of a friend who we have seen on a couple of occasions.

There was another documentary interlude before Roddy Frame took to the stage. Roddy picked up on the feel of the event and entertained us with several amusing anecdotes about his pre C86 days on Postcard records. His set was peppered with gems from the early days of Aztec Camera, he also managed to throw an Orange Juice song into the mix as well.

Then it was back to the bar area, stopping only for a quick hug with Phil, where Steve and Katrina of The Pastels were playing a few tunes. we hung around for an hour or so, chatting to a few nice people including Roddy Frame before heading back to Bristol

All that gadding about (see below) caused my frail body to fall victim to the dreaded man flu. Then again is there anything better in the world than feeling a little ropey but being able to snuggle up in bed, long after the alarm has gone off in the morning? When I did finally make it downstairs those nice TV people had put on some lovely old films to help me pass the day.

Hope to be back on form this weekend as we are heading up to London for a bit of mid 80’s nostalgia. The ICA is putting on a couple of gigs to mark the 20th anniversary of the movement that became known as C86. So on Saturday we will be watching Roddy Frame (although he predates that whole C86 scene), The Wolfhounds but most importantly Phil Wilson. Phil used to be the singer with the June Brides; in many ways to our way of thinking they were the quintessential C86 band. Fantastic pop songs played at high speed – guitars to the fore, wailing vocals and great little trumpet breaks – they looked great as well, if you like the classy nerdy indie boy look which we all (well me anyway!) aspired to. Short hair, early 60’s suits, and great shoes, how could they fail? In our small world they were stars, of course most people didn’t have a clue who they were.

By the time they released their album it was all over for them and most of the bands of that ilk. Strangely “indie music” turned into a very different thing and the moment was gone. A few years later “indie” was everywhere, of course we moaned that this wasn’t “real indie” but who would listen. Soon we had Oasis – the biggest band in the country being called an indie band, which I could sort of see, then anyone who played a guitar was indie, then dance music came along and blew all those indie bands away.

It’s great to see these people getting some recognition at last, compilation albums being released, amazing write ups in the press looking back on those halcyon days. Now the only question is this, should I wear an old suit or a black and white French style striped T-Shirt?

To say that we've been busy since returning from New York would be an understatement. Last week went to The Essex Green on Wednesday, Camera Obscura on Thursday, Crippled Black Phoenix on Friday and The Divine Comedy on Saturday. Sunday saw me playing football in the morning (3-1 win for Bryan Munich) and then DJ'ing at Grumpy Man in the evening, quite a hectic schedule.

Enjoyed all the gigs, the first two were at the recently re-opened Thekla. The Thekla looks great but it was a little strange to get ther just after 8pm for the Camera Obscura gig to find that we had missed the excellent Francois already, due to the fact that an indie club night was going to take place after the bands. That's fine but having to squeze 3 bands in before 10pm is just daft. I think that they need to realise that if people go to see bands they need to see them at a resonable time.

Grumpy Man was good fun, we did have a few people who were asking for "happy songs" so we had to explain that is not what we do. On the other side of the coin the keyboard player for Jamie T who played in Bristol last night, came up to us to say how much he loved what we were playing.

Let's start at the end. If you are heading to England from New York, Newark airport with an evening departure, make sure that you sit on the right hand side of the plane, grab a window seat and enjoy one of the greatest views in world.

The amazing light show beneath the wings of the plane provides you with final reminder, should you need one, of the wonder of this city. The grid system of the streets and avenues below, provide the perfect setting for the largest, most wildly illuminated map in the world. It makes you want to rush to the cockpit and demand that the pilot turns the plane around so that you start your visit again. That wasn't an option, so we find ourselves back in Bristol after a wonderful two weeks in the city of constant surprises.

Given the benefit of time and that we have been several times before, we were able to visit some far flung places, many of which has escaped our attention on previous trips. We spent several hours bird watching in the Jamaica Bay wildlife reserve, visited the Bronx museum, a quirky sculpture park in Queens, and the site of the 1964 world fair in Flushing. Also had a good walk around Harlem and had a chance to check out the Park Slope area of Brooklyn.

In addition we saw lots of bands, ate lot's of nice and interesting food, bought loads of CD's and revelled in the fact that the exchange rate made us feel rather flush.

The apartment was great, we were on East 71st and 1st, not a part of town that I knew well but we found plenty to enjoy in the local area.

Got to spend lot's of time with our friends Bill & Doreen who are about to leave New York for Mexico, they gave us interesting tour of the changing face of the Lower East Side. Where Heroin one ruled the streets, swanky bars and expensive shops now rule the roost. Strangely on Friday afternoon we ended up spending our time with lot's of very excited children (and a few adults) at the launch of the final Lemony Snicket book, well Stephen Merritt of Magnetic fields fame was playing, so we had to pop along. It was great fun.

Our new favourite food shop, is the oh so simple Yonah Schimmel Knishery. Now we thought a Knish is pretty much the same wherever you go, well not here. They are huge and much more tasty than any other one I've had. The real treat though are the sweat ones, the Cherry Knish is a gem. The Spartan interior of the shop looked as though nothing had changed for about 40 years, the service was less than great but we loved the place. The walls were covered with press clippings and new pictures, my favourite being a picture of the Brooklyn bridge which was obviously too large for the intended frame. Brilliantly they simply cut the picture and put the rest of it into a smaller adjacent frame - genius!

We had a bit of a treat on Friday evening when one of Orynthia's cousins came over and made us a huge sushi meal. The four of munched our way through an enormous amount of the stuff and very nice it was to. After the meal, we went down to The Tube club for a reggae evening with John Stapleton and the venerable DJ Derek. A nice relaxed crowd swayed their way through a collection of laid back reggae gems. Nice night all round.

On Saturday evening we went to The Louisiana, it was a busy night for our friend Rich. Firstly he was playing drums for his band Aspen Woods, then later he was drumming with headlining band Secret Shine. It's a strange coincidence that whilst we are in New York Secret Shine will be playing their first ever gig the USA. We are hoping to go along to see the show, so thought that we should check them out first. It was a roasting hot evening in The Louie, but what a treat we had. It's been a while since I've seen Aspen Woods playing as a complete band, they were just great. Very much in the Spacemen 3/Spiritualised mode they get locked into some wonderful groves, the sound was great as were Lee's vocals. At long last they have started selling their demo CD, this was recorded back in 2004 and I can't help thinking that it should have seen the light of day a long time ago. I enjoyed my first sighting of Secret Shine, strnage to think that their next gig will be in New York and that we will be in the crowd for that one as well.

I was kicking myself last week, when I found out that this weeks Sparklehorse gig at The Fleece had sold out. Luckily one of my Grumpy Man DJ friends has come up trumps with a spare ticket, so I shall go to the ball after all!

That was good, just had one of those great weekends where everything falls into place.

It started on Thursday evening, which is the start of my weekend these days. For the first time in ages we watched a couple of back to back comedy shows which were fantastic. First up was the opening show in the new series of Extra's, have to say that I thought that it was astoundingly good. So many great ideas squeezed in 30 mins, if the rest of the series is as good as this one then we are in for a treat.

Next up was The Look of Mitchell & Webb, we didn't see any of the first series which on the evidence of this show is a real shame. Very silly, very funny, very good.

On Saturday I had the unexpected treat of watch a very good performance from Bristol City, we won 3-1 but we could have scored 6 or 7. Some really good football, loads of stikes on goal (hit the woodwork 3 times in addition to the goals) so it made for very enjoyable viewing. Saturday evening was even better, we hooked up with some friens at The Polish Club for the Charlie Parr gig which I mentioned last time. It was one of those lovely nights when, we seamed to know everyone in the room, so as well as being a great musical evening it was also a great social one. At the end of the gig, I had chats with a few people before heading over the road for a friends birthday party. A couple of friends from my days at Imperial Music were DJ'ing and we had a great laugh dancing away until 1 am.

On Sunday we had some of Orynthia's family over for a meal, Orynthia cooked some great food and I had the chance to nose around the Chinese supermarket when picking up some last minute ingredients. Noticed quite a few Asian students getting rather excited about the range of stuff that they can get from there.

Last weekends Grumpy Man went well, in a change from the normal, quiet up to 10:30 then busy routine, the place was pleasantly busy from just after 8pm. I played my normal mix of stuff Tindersticks, Nick Cave, Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Absentee, Dinah Washington, Velvet Underground, John Cale and the like happy to say that no dancing took place.

On Tuesday I went to see a painful Bristol City performance, we won 2-1 against Orient but, boy did we make hard work of it. I managed to turn up at the ground with last seasons season ticket! First time I've ever done that, so I had the shock of paying £21 to get in. Luckily I'll get the money back this week, if I had to pay that every week I'm not sure that I would make the effort. Still we won the match, even if the last 20 mins had a few of us looking for fresh pairs of paints - if you get my drift!

This weekend we are off to see the wonderful Charlie Parr. Charlie is a fantastic singer songwriter from a country blues background. I love watching his huge hands flying around the guitar, he really attacks the tunes making it an exhilarating experience. He has a voice which is perfectly suited to the often confused and world weary songs which he sings. His latest album - Rooster, contains one of my favourite songs of recent years. The song is called Bethlehem, and achingly portrays the sadness of an ordinary father in the time of King Herod's purge of children. It's understated and devastating, a wonderful piece of work.

Last week we went to see The Chimes, a local band featuring 3 former members of the sadly missed Munter. The Chimes are a harder edged proposition than Munter were and are starting to build a set of really good songs.

Other than that we have been getting increasingly excited about the New York trip, loads of gigs lined up!!

On the subject of New York, we watched an excellent programme about the place on BBC4 the other night. The journalist Adam Gopnik presented a excellent history of the recent changes in the city, from the wild days of the 70's to cleaned up town that is New York today. Lot's of amazing footage of rubbish strewn streets with burnt out buildings, contrasting with the real estate heaven of today. Has some of the artistic thrust of the city been lost along the way as the general quality of life has improved? Well Gopnik thought so, is this a price worth paying? Well refreshingly, he didn't know. I'll see what I think in a couple of weeks time.

Well it’s been quite a week if you are a Bristol City fan. We went into the Tuesday night match at Northampton in a precarious league position, needing a decent result to get the season going. Well we got the result, mainly thanks to a wonderful performance from our 18-year-old winger Dave Cotterill. Yet this was not a straight forward win as just before half time two of our players managed to fall out with each other so dramatically that Bradley Orr was sent off by the referee.

Two days later our match winner Cotterill was sold to premiership Wigan for £2 million pounds. Then on Friday Three of our players went sent to prison for their part in a horrible drunken brawl last October, a fourth player (Scott Brown) was also involved in the incident was sentenced to 1200 hours of community service. So when yesterdays match against Brighton came around we were somewhat depleted, yet we managed a 1-0 win, the goal being scored by Scott Brown – had to be really!

On the playing side of football Bryan Munich had their first game of the season this morning, with a friendly match against the newly formed Arthritic Balboa. We managed a 6-4 win, I don’t think it would be too harsh on the newcomers to say that we should have won by more than 2 goals given the amount of possession and chance that we had. Still it was a good run out, although the soles of my feet are killing me now!

Better make the most of it, not really sure how many more seasons I’ll be able to carry on for. In theory we have a pretty big squad, so I could be spending a little more time on the sidelines this time around.

Not too much going on this week, other than seeing The Chimes on Wednesday evening.

We ended our bank holiday weekend by going to see the latest Ken Loach film - “The Wind that shakes the Barley” at The Orpheus.

Anyone that knows anything about the film, will be aware that it’s no jolly romp, it is a fascinating account of how people who start out unified with the best of intentions to change things for the common good, can be driven apart.

It’s set in the Irish countryside in the early 1920’s and makes for grim but fascinating viewing. The resistance it portrays has obvious links with events around the world, which fill our TV news shows every evening. It does make me ask which is the best way to the solution - armed resistance with increasing factionalism or the slow and peaceful track whilst keeping the moral high ground.

Think of the situation in Burma, years of calm protest with occasional awful bursts of violence has seen the democratic resistance dragging on for decades. Then again how many lives have been saved by their refusal to go for the headline grabbing armed conflict? I just hope that in the end they get the reward that they deserve.

The Spinto Band were great fun on Sunday night, came across as a mixture between Talking Heads, Weezer and They Might Be Giants. Bouncy, energetic and full of top tunes they come with the guarantee of a good night out. Pleasingly the venue was much less smelly than the night before.

We been in the midst of a little chaos at home, as we had a new free standing unit built for our kitchen, this means that the old unit is in the hallway and for a few days the contents were spread around the rest of the house. Everything (other than the old unit) is now back in the kitchen and everything is looking very neat and tidy, not always our natural state of affairs! We also got some visitors from Australia staying with us, so for a few days we have relocated to our other bedroom, it's almost like having a mini holiday of our own. We had to take a little collection of clothes with me, find somewhere to put my wallet, keys, work pass, small change and the like. Woke up this morning (cue blues riff) and had that momentary sense of confusion caused by facing a different wall. Managed to get to the bathroom and back without any mistakes and was delighted to find that I had taken the correct clothing for work into the other room, a rare case of forwarding planning working out.

Orynthia has the day off work to show our guests around Bristol, true to form after a glorious summer, the weather today is grey and damp. Still our guests are travelling for 9 weeks through Europe and America, so I'm sure that they will encounter plenty of hot spots along the way. How fantastic to be on holiday for 9 weeks, I've never been off for more than a month at a time, so I can't really imagine how you go back to work after being off for that length of time. I tend to forget things after going to lunch, so over 2 months away from the office would leave me devoid of any work related memory at all.

We went to see the marvellous M Ward at the rather smelly Academy 2 last night. Very low stage, so it wasn’t the perfect place to see this wonderful guitarist in action. Still the songs were sublime and the band and Mr Ward seemed to really enjoy themselves.

You can enjoy the video for Chinese Translation from his forthcoming album if you go here.

Back to the same venue this evening to see The Spinto Band.

Best not mention Bristol City – yesterday was very, very bad!

Summer Sundae was great fun, Absentee, Camera Obscura, Calexico, Buzzcocks and Belle & Sebastian were wonderful. Credit also to Liam Frost, Richard Hawley, Isobel Campbell, Tunng, Joan As Policewoman and M Craft who were all pretty good.

Talking of Camera Obscura as I often do, you can find a nice little promo film about the band by going here and then here for part 2. If you go here you can find a promo video for the title track of the latest album and forthcoming single Let’s Get Out of This Country. What more could you want?

How strange to wake up this morning and to switch on the TV news in the middle of the government security statement. I've forgotten the name of the young chap with the slicked back hair who was reading out the instructions, but his steely tone certainly sent a chill through the early morning air.

Not wishing to personalise this serious event too much, but I know that my mum will be having kittens now. I only told her yesterday that we would be going to New York later in the year, she is a professional worrier so I'm sure the anxiety gene will have kicked in with this mornings news.

In 2001 we had our New York trip booked up well before our Xmas trip, so when the news of the shocking events of September 11th started to reach us it, we had those inevitable selfish thoughts regarding our own safety. Pretty soon we decided that unless anything else happened, we would stick to our plans and make the trip. We didn't want to be voyeurs of others peoples misery but, the signs coming from the city were that once the dust had settled (literally in this case) they wanted people to visit. My mother was very concerned about this and had to put on her best trembling stiff upper lip voice when wishing us a good trip.

So we went, and had an amazing trip. We kept away the ground zero area, however we did spend some time with a friend of a friend who was working in the second tower at the time of the attack. The things he told us about that day were truly awful but he was doing his best to get his life back on track.

So unless we are told otherwise we will be getting on the plane later in the year, looking forward to another fascinating trip to one of the most eclectic places on the planet. The first time I went to New York was in 1984, with the my good friend, the unfortunately named Simon Templar. At the time any potential worry about a trip to New York was purely linked to the supposed wildness of ordinary street life, rather than a terrorist threat. Family and friends were convinced that we would be murdered within seconds of arriving, such was New York's reputation at the time, it's fair to say that Simon and I probably weren't the most streetwise pair of lads, so maybe their concerns were justified.

We managed to get stung within seconds of our evening arrival in Manhattan! We took the bus from the airport to central Manhattan, with the idea of getting a cab to the Vanderbilt YMCA on East 46th street. On leaving the bus we dashed round to collect our luggage before the anticipated gangs of gun touting hoodlums made a play for our enviable collection of black clothing. There must have been a glut of black T-Shirts that year, as no-one took any interested in our cases. We were almost there, now we just needed to take a short ride in one of those famous yellow cabs and we would be safe for the night.

The bus pulled away, and magically the crowd that had been around us melted into the night, leaving Simon and I looking expectantly for a cab. At this point a man approached us, saying that the cab drivers of New York were on strike! Luckily for us, he happened to know where a few strike busting cabbies would be and that he would be happy to help us out. Wow, what a stroke of luck, how nice of this fine fellow to come to the rescue of these strangers in his city. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

He told us to follow him, which we happily did, maybe we should have taken a moment to consider where this chap may be taking us, but no we just skipped along behind him. Luckily for us, the guy wasn't interested in a major scam, all he did was stand in the road, flag down one of the many passing taxi's (obviously there was no strike) and charge us for his hard work. I can't remember how much our special taxi tax was, so it can't have been too much, we took this as notice to sharpen up act and not get caught out again. During the rest of our stay nothing untoward took place and indeed every subsequent visit has been touble free

Saturday saw me back at Ashton Gate for the start of another football season. It was good to catch up with fellow fans outside the Nova Scotia, the general mood was one of optimism. however given the traumas of recent seasons it was tempered with some caution. City managed to get off to a winning start, with a hard fought 1-0 win over Scunthorpe United, only another 45 games to keep the unbeaten run going!

Slightly more exciting, was the fact that we booked a trip to New York in the autumn. We are going for a couple of weeks and are just waiting on confirmation that a nice looking apartment will be ours for the duration of our stay, delighted that we will be flying direct to NYC from Bristol airport as well. We last went at the end of 2001, I'm sure that many things will have changed since then, can't wait to see as many of them as we can. The nice thing about going for a couple of weeks is that we can take our time and have a few lazy days as well, also hoping to catch up with some friends whilst we are in town. In fact some of our musical friends from Bristol will be in NYC at the same time as us, so we hope to catch some Bristolian talent in action. Sufjan Stevens in playing when we are there, the cost of the tickets which I've seen advertised is rather offputting at $150 per person, so sadly I think that we will have to give that a miss.

Saturday evening saw us attending a family wedding, which featured some of the worst music you've ever heard. Classic wedding fodder, painful to the ears, yet I can't really criticize. The DJ at our reception played some shocking stuff and strangely he organise some sort of skipping competition as well, we are still not really sure what that was all about.

Looking forward to the Summer Sundae festival this weekend, so many good people to see: Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura (who have just anounced a gig on the Thekla on October 19th), Richard Hawley, Absentee, Calexico and lot's more. The following weekend we have another treat when the splendid M Ward plays in Bristol, he was fabulous the last time he was here and indeed his 'Transistor Radio' album has had many more plays than anything else on our iTunes, so we are really excited about the prospect of seeing him again.

Had an impromptu walk around the Stokes Croft area last night. We been trying to find a new sofa that we like, without much success so decided to take a closer look at Sofa Riot and liked the look of the place. I’m going to pop in and have a chat with on Friday.

Thought we would eat at Café Kino, and although the menu looked inviting we had to leave for another day. In the early part of the week, it shuts at 7pm, which was just about the time we were peeping through the window.

So we took the short walk along the fabulously interesting Picton Street to the excellent One Stop Thali Café on York Road. It’s a while since we’ve been there, so we were pleased to find that the food is as good as ever and the atmosphere was wonderful. As well as the people eating inside they must have provided about 20 of the take away Tiffin meals for which they are becoming famous.

Lovely to see three independent businesses providing such a interesting and fun place to spend some time.

Update on the Bristol record shop crisis. Had the following message from my friend Pete who owns Rooted Records on Gloucester Road.

“We deal with Vital, Baked Goods & SRD and a multitude of small companies and have good contacts there so we can always get stuff to order for you I hope !! or we'll certainly try - you know we'll do our best - And we also buy just about any vinyl. Pass it on”

Although they deal mainly in the harder end of dance music, they will try to get hold of any of those obscure items and indeed some of the less obscure ones as well. They hope to be selling gig tickets in the near future as well, so why not give them a go, I know that we shall.

So I appear to be in one of my regular Japan phases - watching Lost In Translation, reading Murakami, watching Tony Takitini. I guess I should be listening to Japanese music as well, but I've lost track of what's going on musically in Japan at the moment. Maybe I'll dig out some old CD's from Cornelius, Pizzicato 5 or Roundtable.

I've been trying to work out what started my fascination with the culture of Japan, I'm convinced that it started with a TV series in the 1970's. Thanks to a bit of web research, I think that the programme was called Shirley's World. My memory is of Shirley MacLaine playing a photographer in Japan, in my head the whole series was set in Japan, from what I've been able to find out it doesn't sound as though that was the case, in fact it was probably only 1 of the programmes in a 17 show run. Anyway, it obviously made a deep and last impression on me. I also realised the other day that another, earlier encounter with Japan had lodged itself in the deep recesses of my memory.

I was flicking through a book the other evening and noticed a reference to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Over recent years I've always said that my first memory was of my father getting rather excited during the Manchester United 1968 European Cup victory, but upon seeing that reference to 1964, I suddenly remembered watching grainy black and white highlights of those Olympics. So Tokyo and Japan have both obviously been on my mind for a very long time.

Managed to get down to Arnolfini this evening to see the film “Tony Takitani”. It’s a Japanese film, based on a short story by Haruki Murakami. Most of the English reviews that I have read have been rather unkind about the film, however I’d have to say that if you are a fan of Murakami’s work you find plenty to admire in the film version.

True, the pace is languid and the story slight, yet I thought it was a wonderful evocation of loneliness and loss. Not a car chase of fight scene in sight, just a simple meditation on the events that shape a life.

Bristol looked pretty great this evening as I walked along the dockside to Arnolfini, bumped into a couple of friends in the cinema and another one on the bus on the way home. How nice it is to live in this city of ours, despite the lack of any interesting record shops.

Another one bites the dust!

So just a matter of weeks after bemoaning the loss of Disc n' Tape, news reached me last night of the closure of all the Replay Records shops, where do we go now ?

Other than Rooted, all the interesting record shops have now gone, with that the chance to chat to someone who might actually have some knowledge of music from the margins has gone as well. It's a real shame, I guess it's time to join the world of internet shopping! Apart from Piccadilly in Manchester are there any other good sites out there for the slightly more obscure end of the market?

Our picnic on Saturday was a lovely relaxed affair, we ended spending over 6 hours just hanging around with our friends. Over the course of the afternoon about 20 friends came along, bringing loads of kids with them as well. Our Iranian friend Bij bought along his traditional Iranian 4 stringed mini sitar like thing, which was nice. We chatted, ate and drank and even managed to sneak in a bit football as well. Top afternoon, away from the heaving crowds of Ashton Court, same again next year I think.

We’ve just watched the excellent Lost In Translation, as we now have Film Four thanks to our lovely little Freeview box. I really love the way it captures the dislocation of being in a wonderful city, where everything almost works in the same way – yet doesn’t quite. Causing lots of unintentional confusion along the way.

We went to Tokyo in 1999 for an amazing holiday. I still think that visually it’s the most amazing place that I’ve been to. The film captures the wonder of the place perfectly, the amazing chaos and serenity which can be just a matter of yards apart. It’s a fantastic place to visit, even with our limited grasp of Japanese it was a relatively easy place to navigate your way around and of course the people were amazingly helpful and friendly.

Talking of Japanese things, I’m excited working my way through the latest collection of short storeys from Haruki Murakami – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I’d managed to track down a few of these over the years, thanks to the New Yorker and the web, it’s good to see them collected together with the additional bonus of many completely new ones as well.

For me Murakami captures the mood of Japan perfectly, whilst hardly ever writing explicitly about the place. It’s the air of detached understatement more than anything else, which works so well. Many of his pieces have wildly strange stories to tell; yet he tells them in such an undemonstrative way that they appear believable. When his deals with the straightforward events of like, he can do so in a heartbreakingly simple way, it’s fantastic stuff.

If you are not going to Ashton Court on Saturday, why not meet us for some relaxing fun in the sun. We'll be there from 1pm. Click on the thumbnail to see a nice poster that a friend made.

What a disappointing, dispiriting and hollow feeling Sunday evenings World Cup final left me with. Nothing against Italy, although after a good first half, virtually all their attacking verve vanished into the Berlin night. No, the real misery was the shameful behaviour of Zinedine Zidane; It was one of the ugliest, most brutal things I’ve ever seen on a football pitch, barbaric thugishness made somehow worse, when it’s perpetrator has been the instigator of some of the most beautiful football I’ve seen.

And yet today, Zidane is given a hero’s reception upon his return to France, how different from the response to David Beckham following his sending off for a very minor moment of stupidity against Argentina 8 years ago. Obviously the comparative contributions of these two players to their national teams and football in general were wildly different at the time of their misdemeanours.

Beckham was at the start of a career, which would hopefully lead England to a new level of success on the world stage. As we now know, that promise has never come to full fruition, Zidane was at the other end of the spectrum, having achieved everything any player could wish for on a personal, club and international level. So I assume the praise was for past glories, whilst the hatred for Beckham was caused by the frustration of under achievement when the carrot of success had been briefly dangled under English noses.

Interesting that the French president should praise him for displaying “the greatest human qualities”, whilst failing to mention the inhuman ones he showed on Sunday evening. It was a sickening, shuddering act of brutality, repulsive in it’s vitriolic hatred. The beautiful game lost much of its charm through his selfish act.

The games over the weekend didn't give the level of brilliant excitement I was looking for, we did however get plenty of tension in the Germany - Argentina, England - Portugal games. I thought that apart from a 5 minute dodgy spell Italy looked very good, although who knows how good Ukraine really are. The stars of the show for me though were the French and Zidane in particular. From the 1st minute of the game he was in complete control, every inch the master craftsman. What a joy it is to watch someone playing the game with such style and zest.

I've had a go at picking my team of the world cup so far:

Lehman (Germany)

Sangol (France)
Cannavaro (Italy)
Neill (Australia)
Zambrotta (Italy)

Zidane (France)
Gattuso (Italy)
Riquelme (Argentina)
Ballack (Germany)

Henry (France)
Ribery (France)

Several people came close to making the final cut, Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand from England, Ayala and Crespo from Argentina, Rosicky and Nedved from the Czech team, Bufon from Italy, Gusin from Ukraine, Klose from Germany.

Away from the World Cup , we enjoyed a very nice Sunday afternoon with a few friends in St Andrews Park. Using the copious coverage from the magnificent trees, we managed to avoid getting too hot in burning sunshine. Strangely at around 5:30 we were caught in a major hail and thunderstorm in South Bristol, it was so bad that we turned the car round and came home, of course 5 minutes down the road, the pavements were as dry as a bone

We've spoken to lot's of people who are as appalled as us at the current state of play with the Ashton Court Festival. As mentioned here in the past, we've decided to boycott the event as it has become a travesty of the community festival that it started as. So as long as the weather is ok, we've decided to gather with a few friends in St Andrews park from around 1pm on Saturday July 22nd for our own alternative Ashton Court gathering. Not sure if any music will be involved but we will be able to take advantage of the wonderful little cafe that has opened in the park, enjoy lovely surroundings and hook up with friends old and new, without having to battle to get into the site, get past security, pay £7 (or £9 on the day), and pay over the odds for food and drink. All welcome.

Hey, we're off to a festival!

It's not for a while and we won't be camping, but one again we are dipping our toes in the muddy world of the music festival. In August we are heading to Leicester for the Summer Sundae festival, we've decided that we are too old/lazy/snobby to camp, so have booked ourselves into a local hotel for a few nights.

The line up was just to good for us to resist: Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Richard Hawley, Calexico, Isobel Campbell, Absentee and loads more there are even indoor toilets - bliss. I'm not sure what the capacity of the site is, but I don't think it's too enormous, so it should be a pleasant weekend. It's worked quite well as Bristol City are playing away that weekend, so I won't even need to miss a game.

Talking of football briefly, I'm really looking forward to the games this Friday and Saturday. With the exception of Ukraine I think that any of the teams left in the competition can win it, so it should lead to some very exciting games. This is where my 4 day working week really comes into it's own. The idea of being stuck in work as Germany and Argentina are playing each other is a miserable one, so pleased that I'll be able to watch it all.

I've actually had 6 months of a 4 day working week and it's great. It's easy to take care of a bit of household stuff during the day which leaves more time for us do what we want to do on the weekend. Of course I earn a little less, but I've always thought that time is more important than money.

The Day The Music died….Again.

Yesterday I paid a final visit to Disc N’ Tape, yet another independent that is about to close. It was never quite in the league of some of shops like Revolver and Imperial but something else made yesterdays visit rather poignant for me.

Back in the late 1970’s my record buying kicked in with avengence, fortunately this coincided with me starting work and having some money to spend. Every Saturday morning, I would venture into central Bristol to make the rounds of the record shops.

Revolver Records up at the top of Park Street would be my first port of call, small chaotic and cramped it was the first place where I heard dub reggae blasting out alongside the quirkiest indie gems of the day, leaving there I would wander back down the hill pausing in a couple more record shops and Forever People (for fanzines and badges) on Park Street, before doing the rounds of the bigger chain stores in Broadmead. HMV was in odd little unit across the road from The Odeon and then it would be onto Virgin Records.

Now in those days, Virgin somehow managed to have the feel of bigger version of an indie store unlike the shop that it has become today. One of the main reasons for this was the guy who became known to me as “Chris from Virgin”. Chris was obviously a true music enthusiast; keen to pass on his knowledge to all and sundry despite often looked harassed to the point of distraction.

Of course around that time I started going to gigs inevitably Chris would be there, often playing some tunes between the bands. Virgin eventually became a hellish place to visit as all the new punks decided that they wanted to hang about outside the store on a Saturday, leading to lots of unpleasant behaviour. Chris just soldiered on, in the same way. Briefly I recall him being a DJ in the early days of GWR (I think), bringing a rare slice of eclectic music to the local airwaves.

Years later I would see him shops as became a rep for the Virgin record label, still the same smile on his face as he passed the news of new releases on to the expectant shop staff. Then he seemed to disappear for a few years, before turning up in Disc N’ Tape (you can imagine kids these days asking what Tape is!). The shop is having a closing down sale and I know from my time at Imperial how hard that can be, so I rather shamefully picked up a few things at rock bottom prices and took them up to Chris at the counter. I asked him what his plans he had once the shop closes, sadly he told me that after spending his whole working life in music, he had finally had to give up on it and get an ordinary office job.

I know that directly or indirectly he has been involved in selling music to me for the best part of 30 years. Never again will we see that lovely grin as he pops a CD into a bag and says “great album that one, have you heard…….?”

It was 20 years ago today…..that Orynthia and I had our first date. The location was The Tropic just off Stokes Croft in the middle of Bristol. Now back in the glory days of the C86 era The Tropic was the venue of choice for the up and coming indie bands. The general routine was: NME article one week, Tropic gig the next, Peel session the week after that, then a single on The Creation label, wrapped in a lovely polythene bag.

That particular evening The Loft were playing so we all had a chance to laugh at the leather trousers, which Peter Astor was wearing (another given for the time was that in every Creation band at least one person had to wear leather trousers). The sequence of events was a little different for this gig, as The Loft had already released a couple of brilliant singles.

It was a good gig, but the 20 year encore has been fantastic.

Still caught up in World Cup frenzy at the moment, however I had found time to write a couple of album reviews for Global Café. You can find my reviews for the latest albums from Charlie Parr and Camera Obscura on their site.

Did manage to see new Bristol band The Chimes on Monday, very good they were too. Reminded me a little of Microdisney if anyone out there remembers them.

That’s it for now; I’m off to watch Germany V. Sweden.

Had a rare night away from the world cup and what a great night it was. A few friends came to our place to catch the end of the England match (not great, but we did enough), so that we could make the shot trip to Cardiff for the exciting prospect of a Camera Obscura gig with Francois & the Atlas Mountains supporting. The journey was made all the more enjoyable, as we were listening to a great CD from a chap who records under the moniker Little Name. Go to his lovely website to discover more about this very talented chap.

We weren’t disappointed! A slightly truncated version of the Atlas Mountain joined Francois for a wonderful 45 minute set, which featured a few new songs. As ever their infectious ear for a melody coupled with an exuberant sense of fun and energy quickly won over the crowd. It’s great that they are getting some wider exposure by doing this tour, I’m sure that they will pick up many new friends along the way.

Camera Obscura were on fine form, with 3 albums of songs to choose from they now have a set list, which is full of shining gems. The band themselves seem to be aware of the fact that they are playing at the top of their game at the moment and appear to be really enjoying themselves. They are off to the USA soon, well worth catching them if you can.

Talking about being on top of their game, I’ve just watched a fantastic Argentina side win 6-0. Wonderful football, head and shoulders above anything else we have seen so far.

A bit of a lack of updates round here caused by the World Cup. After a belting start we’ve had a couple of slightly duff games today, still a bit of settling in going on for some of the teams. Loads more good stuff to come I’m sure.

We are off to Cardiff on Thursday to see Camera Obscura, it’s the only gig on the horizon for us at the moment. Looks like it’s going to be another year for us to give the Ashton Court “community” festival a miss. Back in the days before Orange got involved, the festival was a great weekend for the music loving people of Bristol, the perfect chance to catch all those local bands that you had heard about, but had not actually heard. Chuck a couple of quid in the bucket, have a wander round for a few hours bumping into mates old and new – perfect.

What do we have now? £9 per day to get in and Simple Minds – Yes, Simple Minds headlining, what is the point? As a friend was saying to me on Sunday, Ashton Court used to be a community festival because everyone in the community could go to it. Kids with no money, parents with no money and a couple of kids to amuse, OAPS having a curious stroll around, in short anyone.

Now we have to have huge fences and masses of security staff to keep the people out, not really my idea of community. It also used to have a brilliant Jazz tent, featuring the cream of local talent, over the years that changed into the Hip Hop and breaks area, and then it just became a generic dance area. All very sad, but I’m sure that the people who run it will all end up getting lovely jobs in the media or the exciting world of corporate promotions.

So we find ourselves on the brink of another World Cup, it will be the 10th one that I’ve watched. If you do the maths you can work out that I don’t remember watching the tournament in 1966, when England won.

In fact my first memory of football was back in 1968, when my normally placid father shocked me by getting very excited as Manchester United overcame Benfica to claim the European cup for the first time. I don’t remember much about the game itself, just my startled response to dad’s behaviour.

Over the years football has caused me to have pretty excited reactions to the events unfolding before me. Will it be the same during this World Cup? My knowledge of football and footballers is less than it has been since I was a schoolboy. That can bring it’s own excitement, in the past I’m sure that I’ve spent too much time looking for the players I know to perform the star turn. Who knows which players will have me leaping from seat in amazement?

On a rather more parochial level, I have decided to renew my season ticket for Bristol City. After a long period of doom and gloom around the end of last year, I did see enough in the last few months of the season to convince me that watching City could be fun after all.

I’m currently reading “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell, it’s quite different to his previous works in that the narrative structure if fairly conventional. What I’ve read so far it set around the time of Falklands War, such a strange time in our recent history. It was the first time that became fully aware of the fact that I didn’t think the way the media told me to think. I was deeply uncomfortable about the war and was really concerned that if things carried on for some time, I might to go and fight. Of course it never got close to the sort of call-up, which would have involved me, but I well remember the appalling jingoistic tone of the country at large.

Then a few years later we had the miners strike and the battle lines were clearly drawn. To this day I can’t imagine liking or even warming to anyone that had any level of support for Thatcher and the mood, which she created in the country at that time. I’m not sure where David Mitchell is going to lead us, with this nostalgic schoolboy tale, he normally has a trick or two hidden in the narrative, and so I’m intrigued to see what he has lined up for us.

On Saturday evening, a few of the Grumpy Man gang and myself were asked to play a some tunes at benefit gig for the NO2ID campaign group here in Bristol. It was a strange evening featuring some interesting and some not so interesting music, a speech from our local MP Stephen Williams and of course some top notch tunes from the Grumpy Gang. The organisers were able to swell their rather meagre funds by around £200, which was pretty good news for them.

A couple things I forgot to mention previously. I recently read Everyman by Philip Roth, it’s a pretty slim novel, in fact it could probably be reading in one sitting if you live the sort of life where you have time to do that sort of thing. Anyway, I thought it was great, it perfectly captured the way we unthinkingly push ourselves into corners, cutting ourselves off from those that care for us with a mixture of stupidity, carelessness and fear. I also forgot to mention how fab Micah P. Hinson was when he played with Richard Hawley last week. He burns with real intensity, looking forward to a new record from him.

Over the course of the weekend we’ve spent a bit of time with one of Orynthia’s uncles. He is the captain of one of those huge ships that move coal around the world. This weekend his boat was dropping of a massive amount of Russian coal at Portbury Dock. This afternoon we got to look around the ship and hang out for a while in his Captains Quarters.

Not quite as glamorous as you might imagine, it was still cute in faded glamour kitsch 60’s sort of way. I’m not very good on boats, so was quite happy that this one was securely docked, especially when we discussed how the sea could throw around even a monster ship, such as the one we were on. Being a sea for months on end is the strangest way to earn a living that I can imagine, it’s certainly not an easy life.

Ok let’s get this straight; if Richard Hawley comes anywhere near playing a gig in your town, you MUST get yourself a ticket

His gig in Bristol last night was the best show we’ve seen in ages. What a band, what songs, what a raconteur, what amazing guitar playing! Just superb, from start to finish. I did have a small concern that it may have been a slightly one-tempo evening – no way. We had a bit of everything country, ballads, rockabilly, big old anthemic indie rock, killer tune after killer tune.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

So Saturday evening saw us partaking in the festival of bad taste which a Eurovision Song Contest Party. We decided to adopt Lithuania for the evening, on account of the splendid holiday, which we enjoyed there a few years ago, the fact that they had a ludicrous song helped as well.

Orynthia found a Lithuanian recipe for poppy seed cake, and we made froze a bottle of Vodka in some water, giving us fine traditional treats from the area. Jon & Katja’s house was a mass of adults and children wearing a strange verity of costumes as the fun began. Had to feel sorry for the bemused Zimbabwean neighbours we arrived late in the evening as the spectacle neared its conclusion. Lot’s of truly awful music, but a top night of fun.

Last night we nipped along to see, the indie survivors Shack and new kid on the block Jim Noir. The lad Noir and his band produced a sparkling set of tunes – witty, catchy and beautifully played they were indeed a treat.

Shack are very much at the other end of their career and by all accounts it’s a miracle that Michael Head is still alive, let alone producing great music. Pleased to say that Mick and the lads looked to be in rude health and stormed their way through a psychedelic / folky array of gems. Sometimes the guitar solo’s may have been a little too long, but the crowd (mainly men of a certain age) loved it. The final song from the band was the spellbindingly lovely “Comedy”. One of the hit’s that should have been from way back in 1999, at the time it sounded like a great comeback record, now its just sounds like a classic.

Tomorrow we are off to see Richard Hawley and Micha P. Hinson, should be another top night.

Well our London trip was a big success; the gigs by Irene, Bricolage and Camera Obscura were pretty fab. Three bands at different, but exciting stages of their careers, for Irene it was their first gig in the UK. They whisked their way through a blistering set of power pop gems, they were so good that I was convinced they had only played for about 10 minutes, Orynthia assured me that they had played for much longer than that, but it was over far too fast for me.

Bricolage are the being courted by a few labels at the moment and are trying to make sure that they make the right decision. Their gig was in the basement of a club in Shoreditch, the main focus of the evening for most of the crowd was the DJ stuff going on upstairs. They still managed to sound crisp and tuneful, when they eventually hit the stage at 1 AM, it would be good to see them in Bristol soon.

Sunday evening saw us heading to the other side of London, to see Camera Obscura playing in Kilburn. They played all of their soon to be released new album, including the brilliant new Single “Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken” which was released this Monday. It may even be a hit, now that would be something.

We also caught up with a couple of excellent exhibitions; firstly we went to the V&A for the big Modernism show. So many wonderful things here, loads of fantastic architectural stuff, being the highlight for me. On Saturday we went to the Tate Modern for the joint exhibition of the work of Josef Albers & Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. It was the perfect companion piece for the Modernism show. Lot’s of overlapping themes between the two shows, so many brilliant ideas.

When we see exhibitions such as these which focus on work from the early to middle period of the 20th century, I always want to ask older people at the shows what their memories of the artists / designers are. Did they like the work at the time? Did their friends like it? Did it influence their life or have they only become aware of the stuff in later years? Of course being English, I never talk to strangers unless they speak to me first.

We were so sad to hear about the sudden death of Grant McLennan this weekend. The Go-Betweens were one of those bands they never quite became as big as they should have done in the UK. So many great songs over so many years, they even managed to make wonderful records when they got back together after a 10-year break, not many bands can that. Last November we very nearly went to Valencia to see them playing with Teenage Fanclub, two classic guitar bands playing on the same bill, in a interesting city was very tempting, in the end we didn’t make the trip. It’s sad to think that we will never get the chance to see The Go-Betweens again, they were a fine band.

Other than The Go-Betweens I’ve been listening to lots of new stuff recently. The new single by the brilliant Camera Obscura – "Lloyd I’m ready to be heartbroken" comes out next Monday, it’s just wonderful and should be a stonking great big hit single. Also been enjoying the following:
Sol Seppy – The Bells of 12
Calexico / Iron & Wine – In the Reins
Jenny Lewis – Rabbit Fur Coat
Freddie Hubbard – Open Sesame (not exactly new, as it was recorded in 1960!)
Bricolage – 4 track promo single featuring Flowers of Deceit, Footsteps and 2 others
Flaming Lips – At War With the Mystics

Very excited that we are going to see both Camera Obscura and Bricolage in London this weekend!!!

Picked up new books by David Mitchell and Philip Roth the other day, haven’t had a chance to start either of them yet as I’ve been doing a lot of New Yorker catching up. Tomorrow night we are going to a talk which Nick Hornby is giving here in Bristol. I’m sure that’s his a very happy man at the moment, given the success which his beloves Arsenal are enjoying.

Speaking of the New Yorker I’ve got hundreds of back-issues, which I need to get rid of I guess I should go down the ebay route, but can’t really be bothered with all the fuss. Any ideas?

So the 1-1 all draw at Ashton Gate this weekend means that City will not be making the playoffs. The last 15 -20 minutes were amongst the funniest times I have spent at Ashton Gate, with a draw meaning that we would be staying in Div 1 for another year and that Swindon would be making a swift departure to Div 2. Consequently both sides gave up any idea of defending, giving the best game of playground football I’ve ever seen. The fact that both sides failed to score even though no one was really trying to stop explains a lot about the sort of season that both clubs have had. Still I’ll be back for more next season.

Yesterday we hooked up with Dad and Step Mum, as they stopped off in Bristol for the afternoon, whilst heading from Gloucester to London. We had a brilliant lunch in The Olive Shed, before spending an hour or so in the Bristol industrial museum. Must be the first time in about 30 years that I’d been in a museum with my Dad, it turned to be great fun. As every good parent does in these situations the pair of them filled in all sort gaps in my knowledge of the industrial past of the region.

Given my Dads background in the motor trade, it was great fun to look at the part of the museum with him. One of the first things you see upon entering the place is an old wooden wagon, donated by the Gazard family of Oldbury-On-Seven, a family that were well known to him, as his parents lived in the village for many years. At the other end of the spectrum was a lovely example of a Bristol car, a gorgeously sleek car from the 1950’s which my dad used to drive from time to time as his former boss at the Evening Post had one, which Dad sometimes drove him around in.

Upstairs we took a look at the printing history of Bristol, both of them had connections to the print trade through there newspaper related work, so yet more little pearls of wisdom came to light. I felt just like a kid.

Today was spent at Redland fair; we managed not to spend too much money this year, a couple of books for me and few items of clothing for Orynthia. Hooked up with countless friends in a lovely informal way, shame the weather was not a few degrees warmer, but we had fun anyway. Another 3 day working week ahead of me, I love these bank holiday weekends!

Well last weekend didn’t really go to plan. Things obviously weren’t right when I realised that I didn’t really want breakfast. Now anyone that knows me, we realise that this is an unusual situation to say the least. I guess it happens about as often as whole week going past without a self inflicted humiliation for the The Labour party.

Anyway I spent the whole day in various degrees of discomfort, including a few periods studying at close quarters the lovely porcelain of our lavatory. In the evening we had tickets for the Calexico / Iron & Wine gig. After managing to have a spell of stability we decided to go the gig. Must admit that I expected to see a 60% full venue as was the case the last time Calexico play the Academy, but this time the place was packed, Not really want I wanted to see as it’s a very uncomfortable place when it’s busy.

Iron & Wine were first on and pretty soon I was struggling to stay on my feet. After about 20 minutes of their set, I realised that I needed to get out quickly or I was going collapse in the heat. As I mentioned the Academy is not a pleasant place when it’s full, trying to take the short walk to outer bar area was horrible. The stairs leading up from the “pit” area were covered with people trying to see the band. Meaning that you had to push your way through people who had nowhere to go (bit of a health and safety issue I’d think). At last I did make it to the seating area and sat there feeling rather strange for a while.

I had told Orynthia to stay in the main room and watch the band, but after a short while she came to see how I was. When she tried to get back in the main room she found it imposable to get back to where she had been or get any sort of few to see the gig, so without seeing Calexico we decided to leave. Good job we did really, as soon as the car pulled up outside the house, I knew that I was in trouble1 I just about managed to make it to the Tulip bed in front of the house, before depositing an unusual load of plant food at their base. The good news is, that almost a week on the plants are looking better than ever, don’t really fancy feeding them in this way on a regular basis though.

Tomorrow should see the last home match of the season for BCFC, amazingly having flirted we relegation almost all season, we could still make it into the promotion playoffs! It depends on the two teams above us failing to win their games and us winning both of ours, but it could just happen, If it does we have the delight of running around getting tickets for the extra games!

It’s Redland fair this weekend, the social event of the year for people round here. It’s a community fair / car boot sale / performance afternoon where we have picked up some amazing things in previous years. The fun officially starts at 1pm, I think Orynthia will have us looking for bargains before that!

I just been sent this link to some fantastic footage of the brilliant and bonkers Sun Ra, take a look it’s genius.

Joe Volk
Wow, where did those 2 weeks go? I guess that we’ve just been catching up with friends and family following our little trip.

In fact over the Easter weekend we had a bit of a family gathering here, to celebrate the fact that one of Orynthia’s cousins had just returned after about 4 months travelling around Southern India. She had loads of amazing stories to tell and pictures to show us. It felt as though we spent the whole afternoon laughing.

Being a Burmese gathering we obviously had way too much food, so on the Monday we invited 4 other friends over to join us in an attempt at eating it all, they did pretty well, but could not quite clear the decks completely. It’s great to have friends who are happy to come and ear leftovers, pretty wonderful leftovers they were though.

I did my little bit of DJ’ing at “Lost In The Woods” last night. It was the first night for the boys in a new venue, The Lansdown in Clifton. The music took place in a lovely room above the bar. The acoustics of the room were perfect for the “voice and guitar” approach of all the guys who played, lovely evening.

Tomorrow we’re very excited about the prospect of seeing Iron & Wine + Calexico playing. It will be interesting to see Iron & Wine in a larger venue, we seen them twice before in St Bonns which is a tiny social club which no stage at the time. Will their intimate sound work in a venue, which holds around 2000 people? I’m sure that it will, we’ve seen Calexico in this venue before and they were great.

We arranged a little trip to London in May. Over the course of 4 days we will be seeing Camera Obscura, Bricolage and Swedish band Irene. In addition to that we hope to catch the Modernism exhibition at the V&A and the Bauhaus exhibition at Tate Modern!!!!

We will be making the trip on the Mega Bus, it’s costing the outrageous price of £4.50 for the two of us. Yes, £4.50! That’s the return price – it’s mad! To be even more cheapskate we are staying in the guest room with Orynthia’s aunties sheltered housing complex, that’s setting us back £5 per night, amazing.

Well we are back home after our mountain and lochs/lakes holiday. It was about a 1700 mile round trip taking in Glasgow, North West Scotland, The Lake District and Snowdonia. Lot’s of amazing scenery along the way, it was also great to catch up with lot’s of friends during the trip.

Whilst in Glasgow we went to see an excellent band called Bricolage. The 1990’s were also playing, they were pretty good as well, have to say though that the highlight was meeting James Kirk. For those that don’t know him, he was one of the founding members of the group Orange Juice. He released an excellent solo album a couple of years ago called “You can make it if you boogie”. Turned out to be a lovely chap, very funny and interesting. He even managed to give us a few tips for things to look out for in the highlands – he was quite the tour guide.

Lot’s more to write, but lots of stuff to catch up with around the house as well. Just time to say that I’ll be playing a few tunes at the next “Lost in the woods” evening. This will take place on April 20th at The Lansdown in Clifton. The performers will be James McArthur, Joe Volk and Jonny Collins, it’s all arranged by those nice people from Aspen Woods. Admission is £3, which ain’t bad.

So were off for a while, catching up with friends all over the UK, should be fun. Only 1 gig booked, that’s Bricolage in Glasgow.

Will let you what we got up to when we get back.

6 – 0! Yes, Six – nil, no matter how you write it it’s still amazing to see City win a league game by 6 clear goals. To be honest it could have even more, so inept were poor old Gillingham, you had to feel sorry for their fans. Such a long way to travel, for such a shocking performance, I’ve never really been sure why people travel such lengths for a game of football. I’ve never really been to more than 5 or 6 away games in the course of season, in fact which the exception of the play off final in Cardiff a couple of seasons ago, I don’t think I’ve been to any away games in the last 5 or 6 games, no matter much City improve, I think that my away days are over, really – life’s too short.

Other than that, I enjoyed a very funny evening at The Cube on Friday night. A couple of my friends arranged the a gig for the maverick Scottish poet Jock Scot, They are putting out “The Caledonian Blues”, the latest album from Jock, which features musical input from erstwhile Bristolian Gareth Sager. The pair of them played a brief but very entertaining set, Sager seemed to get enormous pleasure from making a seat squeak, whilst playing guitar and Jocks poems and banter were entertaining and enlightening about his rather chaotic existence. Free Cider and a DJ set from Geoff, consisting completely of bagpipe music made it a night to remember.

Today we nipped up the road to see “Good night, And Good Luck” at The Orpheus enjoyed the film as any leftie would. Also made me think that everyone looks good in black and white.



Well maybe not quite everyone!

OK we admit it, we are old! A couple of weeks ago we bought a shredder, so we can take care of all those bits of paper which have our vital details on it, before the hoards of international criminals descend upon our casually discarded paperwork, taking away all our hard earned money.

I well remember laughing at Orynthia’s mum a few years ago, when she refused to put anything in the bin, which had her name on it. What excuse do we have for such grown up behaviour, well not much really. It’s just that virtually every bit of post which we receive these days appears to be from some sort of financial institution offering to lend us loads of money, which is obviously lovely and oh so sweet of them. The worry is that as we cheerfully throw these things away, someone else decides that they would like to pretend to be us and suddenly we have a nice little debt to take care of.

Have to admit that shredding is great fun, must remember not shred any actual money, as that would rather mess up our wonderful idea.

We had some top fun in Bedminster on Saturday afternoon, whilst Orynthia was driving along North Street in search of a mid afternoon snack, I spotted a great looking second hand shop, only a couple of doors away from a café/second hand bookshop, shopping heaven.

Orynthia picked up a wonderful old coat for £10 and some great 60’s crockery (3 plates for a £1!), and then we went into the café. After ordering our drinks and snacks we took our place at a table and started to browse through some of the nearby books. It was then that I noticed the chap on the table next to us, nodding slightly over enthusiastically to the generic 80’s hits CD which was playing. We continued to chomp, slurp and browse as the sound of Thompson Twins filled the air, the guy was around my sort of age but looked as though his mum still shopped for his clothes, maybe even dressed him as well. Really mum, those white socks really aren’t a good idea.

Then I started to notice that he was adjusting the volume and skipping tracks, so I guess he was the in café DJ, nice work I thought. Suddenly whilst Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood was playing, someone else asked what the tune was? Brilliantly our DJ friend launched into a polemical discourse regarding the cold war atmosphere of 1984, which had inspired the song, he reeled off fact after fact in rapid time, before going onto lament that The Power of Love by F.G.T.H. was a sadly overlooked gem, which wallowed in underserved obscurity, in fact the whole tone of his conversation indicated that he thought the Frankie’s were an obscure cult band that never really got the attention they deserved.

Fair enough if he was a young chap, but obviously that was not the case, as anyone who can remember the days of “Frankie Says…….” will remember only too well, for a while in the mid 80’s we all saw more of them than we did of our families. We amused ourselves looking at books of pie recipes and pictures 19th century Burmese girls, smoking huge cheroots, trying desperately not to make eye contact with our DJ friend, before dashing for the door. Top place though, must go back soon.

Talking of top quality DJ’s Sundays Grumpy Man gig was a little strange. We only played for about 2hrs 30 mins as the evening was also a launch night for Helicon magazine. A few friends were amongst the performers and most of the crowd hung around to hear us putting a lie to the notion that anyone can DJ. My own highlight of the evening was one of my colleagues getting most of the way through an Elvis track, whilst remaining convinced that he was playing Billie Holiday, genius. The next one is on April 30th make that a date in those oh so busy diaries.

We had a wonderful night at the ever more bizarre Seymours on Wednesday evening. In addition to some really rather splendid music, the venue itself provided us with lots of fun; the place is covered with signs instructing the punters exactly what is (or is not) permitted. Best of these, is the sign advising that you should “Keep your Shoes on – Be Safe”. Clearly Sandie Shaw could never play a gig there.

The music? Well the evening started with Rozi Plain and Romanhead playing together. Poor old Rozi must be worn out, virtually every time we step out of the house, she’s there playing with someone or other. Not that I have a problem with that, she has some good songs and interesting arrangements are a speciality of hers.

Next up were M. Craft, not someone I knew much about before the gig. The band he has assembled provided a pleasant, understated backing for his American fringed songs. Nice enough without really standing out, I’d mark them as mid-table performers.

King Creosote however is certainly heading for the top of the league. Wonderful songs, sung with real intensity, making even the murky world of accordion lead folk tunes seem vital. His great band provided superb support, whilst keeping a cheeky grin on their faces at all times. The packed crowd lapped it up, demanding several encores.

Yet another sad death this week, the passing of Ivor Cutler was no great shock as he was in his 80’s, but still came as unwelcome news. As with so may things, I first came across his work on the John Peel show in the 1970’s. He had a unique view of the world, telling the most ludicrous stories in a voice that would normally be used for serious political debate, he was a unique performer. We only saw in the flesh once, that was at the Bristol Old Vic back in the 1980’s it was a strange evening, Ivor appeared to take no pleasure in the joyous reception which he was given, keen to do his bit and get off as soon as he could. Everyone in the crowd loved it, he was like the perfect example of the strange uncle in the family – the kids all love his strange ways, whilst the adults never quite know how to respond to things he says. End of an era stuff.

Another Grumpy Man night at Mr Wolfs coming up on Sunday.