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.