They are a band that seem hugely popular over here, amongst the ageing denizens of crusty town. Festivals and gigs that feature the ragtag collective of old punk bands and rowdy Celtic fumed bombast, like Bearded […]

D’oh, forgot the new one, The Strangers Share, by Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage, mainly as I didn’t get to review it. It is, of course, and as ever, a cracker. The Guardian recently called them our own Welch and […]

And I’m as hip as VV! I bet most AWs have similar selection, at that, my 3 being Mavis, Percy and the Tubs. The Adrien Sherwood is on my Xmas list

Unshod also place Pulp at number 1, Mojo has a more otherwise me-adjacent list. They also have a folk chart that echoes the outré taste of Jude Rogers in the Guardian, tending more to post-folk noir noise over […]

I’m having a medicinal Guinness barrel aged Jameson to help me recover from the Coventry ring roads…..

The SK audience was around 55-75. Apart from the support “band”, True Foxes, 2 probably around 25-30 comely West Country wenches who sang and played well, nobody under 50 in the room. Unless drummer Evan Car […]

Personally I would flip centres: stay in Donostia (San Sebastián) and day trip to Bilbao, for the sites you have already earmarked. A car is good, as the scenery is often unusual, given the weird topography. […]

They are great live, these days, and both much tighter and more varied in song style than of yore. See if you can count how many instruments, Sam Wood, the shaggy haired pothead pixie in a woolly tea cosy, plays.

The FD audience are closer in age to singer Ken Bonsall’s age than the young turks he now surrounds himself with, but often look much much older, if be-tatted, be-pierced and unshirted. Scary looking crowd but […]

It’s certainly austere.

Once your new hip has bedded in, I am sure you will be able to bite them short again……..

The thing that is the most constant reminder, is when I look around the room at gigs, or most of them. I guess this is because most of those I go tend to by age appropriate artists and bands, those I grew up with, […]

“Me, in a damsel’s bedchamber, high on the moors, at 2 a.m. With my reputation………”

18-20 Sept. (Or, in the cheshorian calendar, week after Bromyard.)

TV: Started everything and gave up on most, such is the attention span/tolerance chez nous these days. What did we finish, if allowing for the inevitable overlap into what is essentially next month’s agenda. Slow […]

Jack Spratt? That seems a little mean spirited about his current physique. And surely you mean Mrs Spratt, anyway…… (;-))

Concorde??????

Singers with either higher registers or basso profundos seem to do best. It’s those who holler out their mid range who fail hardest.

Pardon?

My mother, of barefoot tinker stock on the Isle of Lewis, thought hitchhiking common, like tattoos and swearing. As such I only ever tried it twice, both after I had left home. The first was after a day trip to […]