Meadbh and I wondered up to Manchester and went and saw Monkey: Journey to the West at the Palace Theatre. It was fantastic. Go see if you ever have a chance (which would mean Paris or Berlin).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imagine/tag/monkey_journey_to_the_west.shtml
For the second time I’ve had to struggle against some strange unnatural feelings of being impressed by David Cameron. None of these urges are based on anything sensible:
1. A year or so ago cycling past him (minus car or security) outside Rough Trade, Ladbroke Grove.
2. Today, Meadbh, Will and I were taking the tube and there was Dave again leaning into the corner of a tube carriage reading a Metro (I think) and regularly clearing his throat. Maybe he was trying to draw atttention to himself. Again, he seemed to be without security.
Both of these moments gave me disturbing urges to vote for the man. I will get over it.
This was a magical night a few weeks ago (17th June), from Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown on the South Bank. Even the name, “The Forest of No Return” was great. It included fantastic moments from Grace Jones (looking marvellous), Nick Cave, Pete Doherty (good, really - he was terrible at Glastonbury), Rosin Murphy, Leafcutter John, Gavin Friday and David Thomas - amongst others. Lots of stuff at Music Like Dirt, and take a look at this Rat Pack moment…
It’s been over a week since I got back… but it was as ever, great. I mostly slept and ambled about, but music wise, CSS, The Killers and Arcade Fire were great. But I didn’t see a huge amount of stuff I really wanted to see… Björk, Spiritualized Acoustic Mainline, The Good The Bad and The Queen, Damon Albarn’s musicians jam thing at The Park, The Hold Steady, oh, and lots and lots of other things. But I did amble and talk rubbish with people for hours - which is why I normally go after all.
It was a bit muddy though. So I’m afraid to say, I did go home on Sunday. And for the first time ever I got to watch some of it on TV, which looked pretty good really.
