Items of interest

…although probably not quite as good as people are saying, the songs (which I excitedly downloaded like it was Christmas morning*) are stuck in my head. The Reckoner, Faust Arp and the first two are all great/lovely/rocking, and others are growing on me.

I paid £40 for mine.

* which makes no sense, I know

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

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.

Ace annoying grating music. Rock jazz – but good. On Warp. And at MySpace.

Great gig. I didn’t want to go, but Meadbh had a spare ticket and she didn’t want to go on her own.

Weird crowd. A weird mix of business-types and WAGs scoffing on their faux-posh food. This made the atmosphere slightly strange, as Foy does not come across as someone like this at all.

The gig started off a little interesting, but then went rather bland, before it kicked off and the audience was loving it. What is it like? Bluesy, folksy, Van Morrison, kind of thing. Great soaring gravelly voice. Lyrics sometimes a bit trying too hard, and a lot of “babies”, but it was an ultimately storming show that won the audience over. Great covers of AC/DC and Michael Jackson too.