Gig in Garsington

This has just dropped into my inbox, the official poster for the gig that Writing on the Wall (otherwise known as the fabulous band what I am in) are playing in about a week and a half. Also on the bill is Robin Bennett's new country band the Grassy Hillbillies ('locals' may recognise the name as Robin and his brother Joe are responsible for running local fab festival Truck, Robin was also described by one of my friends as the batman of cool, so there you go!). The other bands we haven't encountered yet but I can give a small sneak preview of the finale (well the song at least) here it is sung by folk legend John Coppins . Be lovely to see some of you there!

Duotone at the North Wall arts centre

So this weekend Jam and I were lucky enough to go and see My friend Barney and his partner in musical crime James perform as their musical duo Duotone (blog here , myspace here). The gig was to promote the new album Ropes an was held at the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford (great venue but I always forget how far away it is from the centre of Oxford, natually we ended up running to make it). Fantastically there were also a host of other very talented performers appearing with them, including Wod ,

aerial artist Nomi McLeod (blog here),

 Colin Fletcher and Jane Griffith

and the whole evening was compared by master poet Alan Buckley (who also found time to read some of his own poetry despite having a horrid cold).

Stupidly I forgot my camera which is actually less bad than you'd imagine as I couldn't have used the flash anyway and phptographer Kate Raworth was there taking much better photos than I ever could (all images used here are copyright Kate Raworth you can check out the rest of the set here). It was a truely magical evening and I now have a copy of  Ropes which as you can imagine is very very good and you can purchase here. Hurrah for local gigs and artists!

Punting, but not with boats

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, I've had this horrible worse than a cold, not as bad as flu but it's really annoying thing hanging around for about the last month (this is not helped by the fact that my 'new desk' - which isn't that new anymore is near a boss with a 'high natural temperature' hence he likes to air condition us to death on a daily basis. I'm naturally cold so am freeziing all the time, grrrr/brrrrr). Anyway Dave da housemate and I managed to get ourselves passes for the punt which is where all the good local bands play all the good local venues, but in a festival type manner all at the same time. (the chap in the photo above is Nicola's lovely boyfriend Eric, shocking as it is I've never actually been punting so he's standing for me, thanks Eric. What a guy;-). Tim and another friend also called Dave decided to join ua so we needed a plan. Somehow I was put in charge of picking the bands and venues (the responsibilty) so in the end I went for: The Anydays (never seen them before but I liked the name, 7.30-8.45 - The Purple Turtle; Message to bears (my exciting band of the night have wanted to see them for ages, although it's one guy who writes all the music he has put together a band to play gigs, like a folk Mogwai, see now you are interested no? Can be found online here http://www.myspace.com/messagetobears) 8.15-9.00 - the Wheatsheaf; Telling the bees (local and castle established favourites), 9.15-10.15 - Malmason (inside Oxford Castle; Scholars (another band I've been trying to catch for a while they sound a but like Interpol, can also be found online here ) - 10.30-11.30 the cellar. I have to point out that we were only supposed to see the first bit of Scholars as I had already dosed myself up the maximum level of blackcurranty lemsipness and was feeling pretty worn out from my two days of teaching. Scholars were however SOOooooo good that we had to stay till the end of their set and will be heading off to see them again very soon, cause we like a lot. I think best band of the night would be a fight between the aforementioned scholars and message to bears but message to bears would edge it by a whisker. Today I'm not feeling too bad seeing as by the time we made i home it was nearly 1am. This is probably as someone pointed out adrenaline and I will pay for it later, nice...