I’m not putting this in the Nights Out section because this show has already appeared in it and this post isn’t really a review, more an appeal to Afterworders to see whether I’m an outlier or whether anyone else has had a similar experience to me and can tell me I’m not crazy. I went to see ABBA Voyage a few days ago and have been mulling it over since. I went expecting to have a great time but ended up deeply underwhelmed and a more than a bit annoyed. As a visual spectacle, the Abbatars were quite something. The sections of the show in which the group were presented on stage as if they were really there were pretty convincing although the huge close up shots of the performers that appeared alongside them were not convincing at all – they looked like they were straight out of a video game. But there were several occasions when the Abbatars were not present and we simply listened to songs and stared at low grade animation that looked downright shoddy to me, neither engaging me in whatever odd “story” they were telling nor visually remarkable – you see equally good animation on » Continue Reading.

A mate has had to drop out of this gig tonight. Would anyone like the ticket? If you don’t want to pay, you can have it but any contribution offered will be welcome. Just send me a message.

The suggestion in another thread that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard might end up appearing in a film together reminded me of the time in the mid-1980s when Madonna and Sean Penn were on the front (and several other) pages of all the world’s newspapers every other day because of their spectacular fallings out while making the film Shanghai Surprise. It was produced by Handmade Films and at one point George Harrison was reported to be on set trying to get the warring toddlers to make it all up and finish the film.

When he returned to England, George appeared on Jonothan Ross’ talk show and, under pressure to say what had been going on, gave the throwaway response, “The trouble with those two is that they think they’re famous.”

It struck me then, as it does now, as a brilliant put-down that could have been delivered convincingly by very few people – possibly only George and two others alive at the time. But I’m sure there are better examples out there that folk might like to share.

I went to see Richard Thompson at the London Palladium last night. It was, as is noted elsewhere, a stunning gig, the best thing I’ve seen since lockdown so far with RT on top form.

I had been looking forward to the gig for ages, all the more so as I had managed to get my hands on tickets for me and my friends in the centre of the front row – seats A10-A14. Imagine my horror when, as we made our way to the seats, I saw two of them were already occupied – by a couple whose age looked to be of a piece with the rest of the audience. I’m guessing they were probably man and wife.

The support act was playing so there followed a hushed but tense discussion with the man. I asked if he was sure they were in the right seats, he confirmed (politely but firmly) that they were, I used the torch on my phone to compare our tickets and pointed out that his were in row I and that he must have misread the letter as a number. The poor guy was disappointed and a bit crestfallen but, went » Continue Reading.

We’ve shared thoughts on here before about how ordinary everyday stimuli will make us think of bands, song lyrics etc.. That seems to be a common experience among Afterworders and is hardly surprising given the personality traits that many of us are likely to share.

I shouldn’t think that I am the only person here who cannot hear someone announce they have a theory without hearing in my head (and disturbingly often coming out of my mouth) “Which is mine.” I am from Bolton and frequently refer to it as Notlob or even Ipswich without giving any thought to the possibility that my audience might not have the Parrot Sketch so immediately accessible to their consciousness that they’ll decode the reference. It is something of a miracle that I have never asked for a Dukla Prague away kit as a Christmas present (though I did once request a pair of Joy Division oven gloves) and if you mention that you can see a light at the end of the tunnel I’m likely to suggest that it’s the light of an oncoming train. And so on and so on. I’ve been like this all my life but my brain seems » Continue Reading.

Three weeks or so ago, I asked for help getting my iTunes library to work on my new mobile phone (a Samsung Galaxy s10e). I got a load of helpful advice and I’ve now got myself a big sd card and loaded my tunes onto it. When I access the phone from File Explorer on my PC, I can see that all the files are there and I can play them on the PC from the phone’s storage files. So far so good.

Some of the music files work fine on my phone but the ones that I have uploaded to my PC in the last four or five years won’t play. I’ve tried MediaMonkey, Google Play Music and the Samsung Music player but none of them display the music files in question in their listings (neither the tracks nor the albums they’re on). I can see them in My Files on the phone (and they are made up of the right amount of data – they aren’t just empty titles) but can’t get them to play on any of the players from there. I don’t get an error message from the first 2 players and the Samsung one tells » Continue Reading.

This has probably been asked before so if anyone can point me to a previous answer I’d be grateful. Or if anyone has the time to clear the mist from my eyes, even better.

I will shortly cease to possess an iPhone. I’ve bought an Android phone of my own – too late to tell me that was a mistake and I know there are strong views on both sides of the Apple/Android dividing line. Anyway, I’ve got one and it’s fine except for one thing. I’m struggling to find a way to get my large iTunes collection organised to work well on my new phone.

The collection is too large to put on the phone. One solution to that might be to get a micro-SD card and I may yet do that but I never had one on my iPhone and never felt the need to have one – I just selected a few playlists in iTunes and synced them. I’d ideally like to do the same. I don’t subscribe to a streaming service and don’t want to. I just want to be able to select and play on my phone some of the music I’ve already paid for » Continue Reading.

Reading the “The Talented One” thread reminded me how, just as some bands have just the one conspicuously talented member, so others have one conspicuous berk. Apologies if it’s been done before but I thought I’d see if any members of the Massive would like to point an accusing finger at anyone in particular.

Before I go on, can I plead that no-one propose Ringo as the weak link in The Beatles. That’s neither big nor clever. And Linda McCartney’s dead so let’s not be unkind to her either.

A misguided friend of mine holds that Steve Howe is the weakest link in Yes. He’s wrong of course.

My own pet example of this sub-species of musician is Daryl Stuermer. I’m sure he’s a nice man and he’s clearly a very talented guitarist but he is the wrong guitarist for Genesis. Firth of Fifth is one of my favourite Genesis tracks and features some of Steve Hackett’s finest playing – restrained, lyrical and very English. But Stuermer’s jazzy ooh-look-at-me noodling ruins it. I could go on and on but I won’t. I’m off for a lie down to try to forget I’ve had to listen to it again to make » Continue Reading.