An idiots guide to an idiot

Monday 30 December 2019

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Music again

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Music again: Haven't blogged at all since the beginning of November so there'll be a couple in quite quick succession and of course music will fe...

Music again

Haven't blogged at all since the beginning of November so there'll be a couple in quite quick succession and of course music will feature. This blog covers three gigs no less. Went to see Airbourne with Kevin at the Kentish Town Forum at the end of November. Was supposed to be Tara as well but she was unwell (and decided that booking gigs between approximately November and February is a waste of money as they are the ones she's most frequently cancelled because of Fibro).The first support were called Cellar Door Moon Crow and were truly rubbish! Only two of them, their first offering was a rap....it didn't get any better, dreadful!

Pre gig beer

Merch. Which I indulged in...obs!

Cellar Door Moon Crow, a dreadful act!

The second support were much much better. Called Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown they hailed from Nashville and were bloody good! Definitely want to buy their debut album, a great band!
Airbourne were very loud and full of energy from beginning to end! Big Motorhead fans, at one point they brought out on stage a drinks bar and guzzled from a bottle of Jack with a little coke! Also flung half filled beer glasses (plastic ones!) into an appreciative audience! They were a cracking band and one I'd see again. There set list follows which was a good mix of old and new, their latest album having only come out a couple of months ago:

Onto my Birthday then & Tara had booked us a nice weekend in Oxford mainly to see the David Bowie tribute band Absolute Bowie. Having been given the good tidings shortly after the Airbourne gig that I was to be made redundant, again, we really needed something to take our minds off things and get abit of R and R. Absolute Bowie did the trick. After arriving at our b and b we walked towards the venue (02, Oxford) via a couple of pubs and had something to eat in The Rusty Bicycle.

Absolute Bowie didn't have a support as they did two sets, certainly working for their money. The first was from the Ziggy Stardust era and was quite brilliant the second from the 1980's onwards, sort of 'Heroes' era I suppose. The singer didn't sound like Bowie when he spoke but really did when he sang. It was a brilliant evening.

The place we stayed at had a café downstairs where we had breakfast. They tried to be abit different with their menu. My full English for instance had a portion of greens as well......didn't really go though! After that we went native and got a bus into central Oxford and had a look round the Ashmolean Museum, which was great, it included some paintings by some late Victorian/Edwardian artists including Walter Sickert who knew Tara's Gran as a child, so it was interesting to see them, I quite liked his painted called 'A cup of tea' on show here . Then back to the car and off to get Ida from Tim who'd kindly looked after her for the weekend.

We'd had a great time.

Painting by Walter Sickert entitled 'The cup of tea.'

Kas and Stan & later Dan joined us in the run up to Xmas, good fun as it always is with them we all went to our last gig of the year which was St Agnes Fountain over at the Hitchin Folk Club. Featuring Chris Leslie of Fairport Convention fame and duo Julie Matthews and Chris While ( a man down this year as David Hughes was ill) they play not just traditional Christmas songs but also write their own, and jazz up some others. There's always a warmth to their performance, its not just a music gig either as they all contribute a spoken word piece as well. it was a very good night.

Xmas hats!

Saturday 9 November 2019

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Gigs, gigs, gigs.

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Gigs, gigs, gigs.: Well you know me and a live gig! Nothing better! Already we have a few dates in the diary for next year. Saxon in March. This should have t...

Gigs, gigs, gigs.

Well you know me and a live gig! Nothing better! Already we have a few dates in the diary for next year.
Saxon in March. This should have taken place in October but Biff Byford the singer had to have a heart bypass hence the dates of the tour being put back. This gig will be a cracker with the supports being Girlschool, Diamond Head and Krokus (on their last tour ….supposedly!) and with it being at the Hammersmith Apollo, or whatever they call the Hammy Odeon now, a visit to the first class Dove near the Thames beckons. Dinner there as well I suspect, cant wait!
Soon after Saxon we go to Islington to see Magnum. My fourth time of seeing them, Tara's third & Kevin's 18th ! Their support is called Theia, found them on You Tube and the sound quite good.
After that in May we go to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at the Birmingham Arena. Tara's choice this one, she gamely comes along to most of the old headbangers I like so its only fair that if it comes up, we see bands she particularly likes! Don't know of any support at present. Well that's three booked for 2020 plus the New Forest Folk Festival in July, though 2019 isn't finished music wise. For my Birthday we are seeing Airbourne in Kentish Town at the end of the month. Their supports are Cellar Door Moon Crow from Sheffield, Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown from Nashville & with Airbourne from Oz it'll be quite a multi national gig & quite frankly I can't bloody wait! Got all 5 of Airbourne's studio albums and there's some good stuff there! But it doesn't stop there. On my actual Birthday Tara has booked us a night away in Oxford (always a great city to visit) to see a David Bowie tribute act. I never got to see the man himself so this reckons to be a real treat. Live music. You can't bloody beat it!

Thursday 7 November 2019

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Airbourne

An idiots guide to an Idiot: Airbourne: I threatened to review new albums that had taken my fancy & even though I've had it a couple of weeks now the new offering from Airb...

Airbourne

I threatened to review new albums that had taken my fancy & even though I've had it a couple of weeks now the new offering from Airbourne must get a mention. Doing the Amazon pre order thing again I got on the day of release...which was nice, and then immediately and quite decisively I did nothing at all with it.
I left it until I was back at work and played it far too loud in the car! 'Boneshaker' is Airbourne's fifth studio album. Not as good as some of them it must be said but still pretty good. The reviewer of this album in Planet Rock magazine only gave it 3 (out of 5) saying they sounded very like AC/DC which indeed they do, but in my humble opinion that's no bad thing. They sound like early AC/DC with a real excitement and rawness to their sound that I really enjoy. Plus their gigs are considerably cheaper than AC/DC!
The album opens with the title track Boneshaker, also released as a single I think. I'd heard this one on Planet Rock so knew I liked it. There's 10 tracks on the album and to be fair none are too cerebral, but then I don't want that from Airbourne or indeed most of the music I listen to, I like a tune I can remember and if possible words easy enough for me to remember as well, so this album really delivers. My favourite track is 'Sex to go' which has a great rhythm to it (no Mrs!) and with this deluxe CD I mistakenly bought not only is there two extra live tracks(Heartbreaker & Raise the Flag) but also a limited edition poster opened out for this photo and destined to remain folded in the CD box forever more!
I'm not doing a track by track review of this fine album but will finish by saying I think its a worthy edition to the Airbourne stable of albums and I'm really looking forward to seeing them at the end of the month and hearing some of these tracks live! Rock n Roll For Life as the album states. Stay tuned!

Album cover

Limited edition poster never to be seen again!

Sunday 27 October 2019

An idiots guide to an Idiot: London. Only Fools and Alice!

An idiots guide to an Idiot: London. Only Fools and Alice!: A splendid couple of days spent in London with the Memsahib to celebrate her Birthday. Julian kindly dropped us at the station & off we...

London. Only Fools and Alice!

A splendid couple of days spent in London with the Memsahib to celebrate her Birthday. Julian kindly dropped us at the station & off we went on an uneventful, if seemingly long journey. Got to our base for two nights, the Hampton by Hilton in Docklands and chilled for a while before going down to dinner, then off to the Theatre Royal in Haymarket for Only Fool and Horses the Musical.

Theatre Royal's fire curtain

and ornate ceiling.

Cut it abit fine getting there to be honest but all was well. The show was absolutely brilliant! Very funny, the characters all sounded, if not looked like their Only Fools characters. You didn't really have to know anything about the programme to find it funny though I think it did help in parts as alot of the gags were from the TV programmes, with the extra special gags ( Del falling through the bar for instance) getting an extra cheer from the audience with other gags hinted at. It was very good and I'd highly recommend it, with ice cream during the interval we'd had a great night! Back to the hotel passing the extinction rebellion mob taking up space in Trafalgar Square. Don't get me wrong . I agree we must stop buggering up the world we live in, I'm just suspicious of the layabouts who are always available for demonstrations......or did they all just get time off work!?
Up to a good breakfast, plenty of it and on asking gluten free bread and cereal for T so all was good. We'd arranged a tour of Shakespeare's Globe theatre on the South Bank so made our way over there, found ourselves walking past Sumner Street which if my memory serves is where my Grandad worked in a newspaper printers. He got my Dad a job as a reading boy when he left school in those days at 14. Basically a reporter would write his piece then get a reading boy to read it aloud to see if it sounded ok. My Dad was no reader, not at all stupid he did struggle with putting punctuation in the right places and read the same way! It wasn't long before the reporters would pass him over for someone else. My Dad was furious, telling me that his dad didn't have a clue about him get him such an unsuitable job & he made a fuss when my Dad left!
The Globe is only 22 years old and based on as much evidence as is available on what it would have looked like in Shakespeare's time, the original is nearby but underneath another building which itself is listed so there's no chance of excavating.
Calling it a 'tour' of the Globe is stretching it abit. There's some exhibition bits to see then your guide takes you into the Globe where you sit and he tells you everything there. It's not a tour behind the scenes etc. We were told we could take as many photos as we liked unless there was any actors on stage. There was to be a matinee performance of A Midsummer's Night Dream and a couple of actors bumbled out onto the stage and started these daft warm up noises, then press ups, then stretches accompanied with afew more noises. What a load of pretentious bloody nonsense! They may have well announced to everyone, 'Here we are darlings, we are actors!' It was however very interesting to find out little nuggets like this Globe is the only building in London to be given permission to have a thatched roof since the Great Fire of London in 1666 due to the fire risk. We were quite keen to see the afternoons performance it sounded pretty reasonable with standing tickets at £5 each...but they'd sold out so the only ones available were restricted view seats from £28 each so we left it.

Boxes were the great and the good would seat

The Globe stage

Us with the great metropolis as a backdrop.

We walked on heading towards Borough High Street and passed this:

It's been used as a burial ground for people considered outcasts from medieval society such as prostitutes & paupers. It was used from medieval times closing in 1853 with an estimated 15000 burials therein. Sounds like part of it was rediscovered in the 1990's when the Jubilee Line was extended. The Friends of Crossbones made and tend gardens and added memorials to the people buried there. Go to their website to find out more :
http://crossbones.org.uk/
Onward then and spotted this towering above us.

Got to The George Inn in Borough High Street. A coaching inn dating back to the 17th century and the last remaining one in London, its owned by the National Trust but run by Greene King Brewery.
Had a very nice pie here (T had Halloumi) and their ale. The George first then Twickenham Redhead.

After a spiffing lunch and drinks we decided to return to the hotel for bit of a rest before tonights gig.
Got a cab to the 02, found a beer, then our seats and a t shirt for me (£30 I must be mad but I like a gig t shirt!). Our seats were better than I'd hoped for, we were really very near the stage on the right.
MC50 were the first support. Celebrating their 50th anniversary they started quite well but got a bit tedious, with a looney singer (Marcus Durant) who plucked imaginary things from the air and flicked them towards the audience! The Stranglers followed them. They were good when they did songs we knew but their other stuff left me unmoved. There're certainly not a pretty band, there's no eye candy in this lot! I'd seen them about 40 years ago while their then lead singer, Hugh Cornwell was in prison on a drugs rap so the vocals were taken by such luminaries as Ian Drury, X-Ray Specs, actor Phil Daniels and more..it was better than tonights gig! However this paled into insignificance when Alice took to the stage. Quite brilliant would be the short answer, its more of a show than a gig with Alice Cooper. There's certain theatrical bits to it, no less than monsters running on, college girls getting murdered, Alice being guillotined not to mention a strange zombie type killer bride & nurse! You really have to see it! With a final flourish during the encore of 'School's Out' with giant balloons descending on the audience then Alice spoke to us and introduced the band including an exceptionally good girl guitarist Nita Strauss. There was also a short tribute to Ginger baker who'd just died and Pink Floyd's 'Another brick in the wall.' It was a bloody good gig! We didn't rush from our seats and ambled back to the station by which time had cleared of crowds (not a sell out, infact the top tiers of the 02 were curtained off) It had been a great, very busy couple of days!