You may have seen the piece by The Independent come up elsewhere. The government are blaming the EU, the EU are blaming the government. Let’s hope the whole sorry mess is sorted by the time sufficient vaccine has been administered to allow venues to open again.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-visa-free-work-musicians-eu-brexit-b1784600.html?fbclid=IwAR3Q7k3Y4g9qnF3jRxZO98EDSz04gQm8Z8VZyOpVRG3frbVk7GxoUDxOc5g

I just heard this on the radio. Not new but new to me and the video starts in Great Suffolk Street in Southwark where I worked in the mid 90s. The area was pretty shabby in those days although the building I worked in, on the corner of Union Street and Great Suffolk St, opposite the Union Jack pub, became a Gordon Ramsey restaurant and the company had another building a few doors down, The Old Bacon Factory, which still smelled of smoked bacon. Opposite The Old Bacon Factory there was a green cab stand cafe which served huge doorstep breakfast sandwiches. Where did that 25 years go?

My daughter would like some new earbuds, reasonable sound quality and durable as her Sennheisers always fail on one side. Other than that, they have to be “squishy”, ie not hard like Apple earbuds and have a selection of different size parts that fit the ear canal (probably a given). For me, I would ask that they not be too expensive, £50 max maybe?

Over to you……

I heard this on the radio yesterday where it stood out from several “new” artists and brought a little sunshine into my day.

Have a good weekend.

https://mariebashiru.bandcamp.com/

For no real reason, other than a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with a stranger who turned out to be a bass player who knew his music history, as well as the mention of Head Hands and Feet on the country thread, I find myself with this going round in my head. Chas Hodges departed a couple of years ago sadly and I wasn’t a fan of Chas and Dave really but this is a cracker. The Word podcast with him is definitely worth revisiting.

http://wordpodcast.co.uk/2018/09/23/word-podcast-215-with-chas-hodges/

After the scorn poured on the government for suggesting that a ballet dancer could retrain for a job in cybersecurity (I know, it’s possible, but unlikely they would want to), I took the online questionnaire which gave me options of virtually every profession known including, but not restricted to, Magistrate, dressmaker, oil rig worker, university lecturer, Montessori teacher and, least suitable for me, football referee. Apart from the fact that at 56, I doubt anyone will invest the resources needed to train me for any job that requires anything more than minimum health and safety obligations, who the hell designed this waste of tax money? Has anyone else had a go at this?

It’s a grey day here on the South Coast. Autumn has arrived and we are going to the funeral of a friend’s mother, who we knew quite well. I’m feeling quite low today so would you please post anything that might cheer me up? I’ll do my best to look through them all later today. Stay safe.

As mentioned in the WFH thread, I’m looking at diversifying into streaming live shows as a way of keeping my business going and I’ve got a potential gig lined up. Not a mega dome, more like 100 people seated at cabaret tables with 2 or 3 musicians seated doing a semi acoustic set. Tickets to be at the actual gig would probably be £20. There are 2 business models: buy a virtual ticket to gain access to the stream or an online donation/tip jar. If it was shot at a reasonable standard, 2 or 3 cameras rather than a locked off wide shot, what would be a reasonable ticket price, assuming you would be interested in watching, or would you rather make a donation? Obviously there are costs involved but the musicians would benefit too.

Waterboy in chief will be on during the second half of Robert Elms’ show today. Also available on catchup via BBC Sounds or whatever they call iPlayer Radio these days.

This popped up on my Facebook feed last night. Ringo, Robbie Robertson play The Weight with musicians across 5 continents. Have a good day everyone.

I need a little advice please. We have two identical 2009 Mac Book Pro OSX10.10.5 and my personal MBP which is 2015 OSX 10.14.6. My wife just pointed out that when she backs up her 2009 unit with time machine, when looking at the TM back ups, she can’t see the individual files eg 2019 invoices. This is the same on both the 2009 machines. Looking at the Time Machine back ups for my personal machine, approx 3 years old, I can see all photos, documents etc. The difference seems to be that on the 2009 units there is only a Shared folder rather than a folder named for the user, as on the 2015 unit. Is this normal? Are all the documents being backed up and just not visible?

Many thanks

We managed to get some pasta about a week ago (just a couple of packets of spaghetti, my daughter lives on it). I’m more aware than usual of trying not to waste food as the store cupboard staples we are used to always having such as the aforementioned pasta, tinned tomatoes, baked beans etc, are currently hard to come by. Tonight, we are having spaghetti with a red pepper and passata sauce with a hint of chilli. I’m drinking the last of a poor bottle of red and I’m not sure I can be bothered to try and find any more as the wine shelves in t(e supermarkets are almost as bare as the dried goods and tinned foods aisles. I’m listening to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game album as my daughter covered the title track for her GCSE music exam piece. How about you?

I’m working in an office block behind Piccadilly Circus today. I “got in” last night so, although it wasn’t peak traffic, it was still pretty awful. Such is London but as I had a van load of equipment, I had no choice other than to drive. Today, I find that Extinction Rebellion, having been moved on from Trafalgar Square, are planning to disrupt the Tube as a way of further publicising their agenda. To me, this seems to be madness. Disrupting the journeys of 5 million passengers who aren’t driving will surely bring negative publicity won’t it or am I missing something? London has a mayor who has already made driving in London more expensive and doesn’t seem to be afraid to introduce unpopular measures around traffic and pollution so are Extinction Rebellion barking up the wrong tree or are they merely doing what’s needed to highlight the severity of the climate change crisis? FWIW, I’m broadly sympathetic and agree that change is too slow but I think their efforts would be better employed targeting cities that don’t have congestion charging or Low Emission Zones although Londoners seem to have got used to paying the charges and the traffic is » Continue Reading.

Preparing an evening meal often involves choosing music to accompany the chopping and cooking. Trawling the Sonos, tonight’s forgotten gem that I stumbled on is World Party’s Put The Message In The Box. Have a good evening everyone.

In which ver Floyd’s lighting director has to deal with local follow spot operators and trying to find someone to turn out the house lights. Oh, and someone taped the crew comms. Apologies if you’ve seen this before but it popped up on a Facebook group and made me smile.

Musing about my school days over on the 70’s thread, I realised that my adult life was pretty much defined by a couple of decisions I made fairly early on. The first was around the age of 11 when my parents asked me if I wanted to go to the local private secondary school. They didn’t do much beyond ask the question and I replied “no”, partly because money, while not really tight, wasn’t splashed around much, my parents having grown up between the wars in modest circumstances and I was aware it would be a considerable expense for them. I also had no idea what the school was like so declined the offer because of my fear of the unknown. What they should have done was taken me to the open day and let me make an informed decision. I might have liked what I saw and enjoyed my later school years rather than enduring the unambitious mediocrity of the school I actually went to. The second was the result of a casual conversation with a friend who had just started her first job after a government retraining scheme. I was in a dead end job, having given up » Continue Reading.

Labelled With Love by Squeeze just came on the radio. I love the moments that happen occasionally where I hear something and am reminded of just how great a song is and this was just such a moment. Have a great day everyone.

Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon is on the Robert Elms show on BBC Radio London today from about 10.30am if I heard correctly. Available later on iPlayer/Sounds or whatever they’re calling it this week.

Message ends

We have two cats. Recently, we have sort of acquired another. He has a home a few doors down from us but seems to prefer our house, barging in whenever we open the door and making a bee line for our cat’s food bowls then hanging around as if he lives here. His name, of course, is Buddy.

With artists increasingly becoming cottage industries, responsible for all the stuff that record labels used to do, such as fronting recording costs and organising tours, many have financed new albums by using fan funding site Pledge Music. Unfortunately it seems that, recently, Pledge haven’t been passing on the money they received on the artists behalf, making it difficult or impossible for projects to be completed. More info here https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments?fbclid=IwAR2pRRFqx69gLT1lo7z-nAzbflZMnJEe1_65OFSgNqOIk_A0ipMe_RW4_ZA

Soundtracking my time in the kitchen tonight is Cock a Hoop, The latest album by The Men They Couldn’t Hang. They’ve always used real people, places and events in their lyrics and this album is no different. If you feel so inclined, please post songs that mention real streets. First up King Street Serenade about the street in Hammersmith.

My elderly Acoustic Research AR EB101 turntable needs a new stylus. It was quite an expensive deck in its day (about £400 in the late 80s) and the last time it had a replacement was years ago when I had the motor replaced. since then, it’s been in and out of storage and I’ve neglected the stylus. Your recommendations please along with any tips for fitting and setting the weight. Instructions are long gone I’m afraid. Thanks, you lovely people.